Lidija has always moved from one place to another, with never a sense of home. At the House of Opportunity, she can start to build her own.
Lidija* is a great baker. She makes wonderful cakes, and her friends enjoy eating them with her. Lidija loves her friends and is always ready to help them, should they need anything at all. She has been living with some of these friends in the House of Opportunity in Niš, Serbia for nearly five months, and is enjoying life. For Lidija, enjoying life is a whole new experience.
At the age of 18, Lidija had to leave the Shelter for Children and Youth, which no longer had a place for her; the outlook was bleak. Bleak was normal for Lidija. She’d spent the previous seven years with a foster family, but then she had to go to the Youth Shelter. There aren’t many options for foster children when the funding for their placement ends.
There had not been much of a place for her at home with her parents either. Her mother and father both had serious disabilities, and the family home was full of quarrels, drunkenness and neglect. Eventually, Social Services decided that home was indeed no place for Lidija, and so she was fostered.
Now Lidija is developing a sense of home, family and optimism. She will always be welcomed by the team at House of Opportunity, and they are working with Lidija to help her map out a future that was previously unimaginable; a future in which Lidija can make a place of her own.
*Name has been changed