Animal Welfare Romania Project #43186

Introducing the PawzUp Homeless Animal Center

by Fundatia ROLDA

Project Report | Apr 5, 2026
Update on Pawz Up Centre build

By Trish Loveland | Fundraising Officer

Charities from all over the World have been having a tough time with increasing financial pressures initially from the pandemic, subsequent high inflation and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
While some working in 3rd sector are losing their jobs, at ROLDA we are trying to minimize the effects of global crises, which do affect us, too: reduced number of adoptions, difficulty to find reliable and skilled personnel, solutions to counterbalance the constant rise of taxes, and increased living costs for services and supplies.
The unanimous advice from specialists was to stop investments until the economy becomes more predictable and the toughest decision for us was to freeze the PawzUp building plans not to risk to unbalance our fragile budget.

Despite these recommendations, we are determined to save lives and improve our animals’ future! From the beginning of year, we made important progresses: we passed the first phase of informing the population and now we are at phase two/the last (these are mandatory steps, required by the City Hall where the land belongs) and thanks to Marius, our architect and his team, we started the authorization process, depositing mountains of papers to various institution to obtain approvals and permits. We gathered most of the approval with 5 more remaining to obtain after we make certain modifications in papers to meet their requests.
We aim to apply for authorization until the end of 2025. Then, we are planning to use the legal means to extend the authorization to maximum permitted by the law, which will give us time to assess the economic changes, to project them on our budget and take correct decisions about the proper timing to make investment, for the ca

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Dec 8, 2025
Update on raising funds for our new shelter

By Angelique | Fundraising Manager

Aug 2, 2024
PawzUp: new website, new hope. Latest news

By Dana Costin | President ROLDA

Dear ROLDA wonderful supporter,

In case you missed it, we're so excited to share that earlier this year we officially purchased the land that will become home to our groundbreaking PawzUp shelter
But, our journey to bringing this dream to life is far from over...
Below you can read a message from Dana Costin, ROLDA President.

“Ever since I started rescuing suffering, abandoned animals 20 years ago, I’ve had the mindset that many Romanian people can’t afford this sort of activity. I’m talking about animal rescue, veterinary bills, supporting the construction of modern animal shelters, and so on. We thought that Romanian people had no money for charity, and thus we always appealed to our foreign supporters and later to our foreign branches to get the funds we desperately needed to survive.
When I started to seriously think about the PawzUp centre and everything it requires (responsibility, time, logistics behind it) and I made a list of all the costs, I was afraid to add them up and see the total sum.
I knew it was slowly starting to slip into “dream” territory, a vision impossible to materialise into this world. I showed my mother that rough draft that contained both my estimations and my vision for the project and she compassionately declared, with tears in her eyes, that she would be the first one to donate. She told me that she would always support me, no matter what, and that I shouldn’t forget that I could “do anything I set my mind to.
Moved by my mother’s conviction, I started to play with the numbers, trying to reduce the costs as much as possible and come up with a reasonable sum to present to all of you, my beloved supporters.
All that’s left is to decide for yourselves whether I succeeded or not in my endeavour. What’s left to say now is that I was born and raised in Romania and I want to make this country a better place. Experience has taught me that animals have special powers to help us and heal our souls if we are willing to give them a chance.”

Building or doing good in Romania seems to be always full of challenges.

Not only were our plans to upgrade the Big Shelter denied, but the un-helpful authorities announced us, two years ago, that they have plans in place, already approved, to build a road directly where the ROLDA large shelter is

Over the last two years we desperately searched for a solution.

We sprang into action to search for an alternative home for PawzUp!

Thanks to our wonderful supporter from Australia, Helen, who left ROLDA a generous gift in her will, we managed to buy a large piece of land with direct access to a main road

This means we can finally start the building of PawzUp!

PawzUp is more than a bold dream. It is a project full of hope, resilience, and passion. It's our legacy, built in the community our founder calls home.

There is a piece of every person and animal who has joined us on our journey so far in PawzUp, and it's because of them that we've been able to make this dream a reality.

Thank you for staying up to date about this difficult but yet, so amazing project!

ROLDA Team

Links:

The official website PawzUp Center ROLDA

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