When Georgette Mulheir was given the chance in 2012 to speak at the TED Salon in London, she took the opportunity to address the tragic condition of orphanages around the world and she believes that the vulnerable children who are part of these broken systems and institutions deserve better. At the beginning of her own speech, Georgette Mulheir brought up the startling statistic that there were around one million children in orphanages in just Europe and Asia alone. The fact that these institutions do not provide the best of care for these children isn’t a secret, but some see it as a necessity as they have no idea what else would happen to these orphans who don’t have a family to take them in. The effect that placing children in these large and impersonal facilities has been researched over the past six decades and the results show that it can have some devastating effects. The brains and bodies of small children go through a lot of development in their first few years of life and without the stimulation and interaction of parents, some do not develop to their full potential.
Georgette Mulheir notes that multiple factors contribute to the negative environment provided in institutions and that they must be addressed to give these children the childhoods and futures that she knows that they deserve. Georgette Mulheir began striving to make a difference in the world from her teenage years on and this passion continues today. She is considered one of the most significant social workers in the world and was recognized for her work in 2014 by Social Work Degree Guide in the United States. Born in 1968, she attended Sheffield Unversity where she volunteered her time to help refugees and the survivors of sexual abuse. The work that she has done in Romania managed to lower the number of children who were institutionalized in orphanages from 200,000 to 20,000 from 1993 to 2015. She is a staunch advocate for the rights of children and has published four books on the subject.