1,000 Warm Toes
A small child stares through a frosted window, studying a freshly-fallen blanket of snow. He longs to run outside to build a snowman, but a white-coated warden tells him that he can't, because his tattered cloth shoes are inadequate to protect his feet and keep them warm. Besides that, he's suffering from tuberculosis, as are the other 120 children with whom he lives inside the same massive, concrete building. Their home is Cornesti Orphanage, one of 43 such state institutions scattered across Moldova, Europe's poorest nation. Cornesti is reserved for children with TB.