BUCHAREST, ROU – Santa Claus arrived last night at Headquarters Multinational Division South-East, where the holiday season just began.

Together with their families, militaries and civilians of this NATO headquarters, both Romanians and internationals, they all joined the Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, conducted by General Major Daniel Petrescu, commander of HQ MND-SE.

The special guests of the party were the children from ”Cireșarii” shelter from Bucharest, who are the beneficiaries of the charitable campaign organized by the headquarters personnel, during which they collected more than 11,300 lei. The campaign started at the beginning of November with the Social Club HQ MND-SE Charitable Fair, where the ladies sold a lot of homemade Christmas decorations, pies, cakes and other handmade products.

During this event, more than 5900 lei were collected. The campaign continued with a blood donation activity, where the volunteers donated not only blood, but also the meal tickets received.

Finally, we collected the money from the raffle tickets sold for the Winter Ball. Meanwhile, others donated money directly into the three boxes places inside the headquarters. At the end, we realized that we achieved our goal to have 10.000 lei for buying presents and a lot of daily goods and for the children from „Cireșarii” shelter. Invited at the Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, the children sang a lot of traditional carols and received gifts from Santa Claus. Their true joy cheered the holiday atmosphere of the party.

Santa Claus gave gifts to all the children of the personnel, from the smallest to the biggest ones, present at the ceremony. The surprise of the party was an artistic program with winter Romanian traditionsperformed by the military choir of the 122nd Logistic Brigade. The show entertained both children and their parents.

The party continued with a raffle for 2 tickets at next year Bon Jovi concert in Bucharest. One of the kids picked the lucky ticket: number 85 was the winner! At the end, everybody was invited to a traditional festive dinner.

We wished each other ”Merry Christmas” and ”Happy New Year” and we left the party with the joy of being all together not only for exercises and trainings, but also for relaxing and having fun.