About Us

History and calling

After the revolution from 1989 and changing of the communist system, while serving as a pastor in the Christian churches in and around Beius, we have realized the need of involvement in social life. We started with helping families in need and orphans, and organizing camps for children, teenagers and young people, as these life cycles are crucial for the formation of men of character, men of integrity who can be a real support for the society. To have an ampler impact in society, in 2001 we founded the Christian Foundation Hanielim, being a non-governmental, non-profit entity with legal personality.

The Foundation's purpose is to promote Christian moral values, increasing the cultural, artistic and intellectual level of children, adolescents and young people through educational, social, recreational methods, sporting, creative exchange.

Limited circumstances in Romania

If in the 90s Romania made itself known around the world with his orphans and appalling conditions of the orphanages, today Romania is facing a new category of orphans, called "orphans of crisis", those children whose parents have gone to work abroad. 350,000 children have at least one parent left and 120.000 both parents left. (Source: UNICEF, Gallup, Social Alternatives - 2008). We still have children in orphanages and the orphans of the 90s are adults who have problems in social and professional integration and among those children abandoned by both parents to work abroad there are many cases of suicides of the let children.

Then, 100.000 children and teens are not enrolled in school, but UNICEF says that their number would be much higher. Thousands of children cannot write, read or count. Most cases of dropout are among the Roma children. Belonging to a broken family, lack of education of the parents, their negligence, lack of a job or alcohol abuse are family difficulties that lead to dropouts.

Other statistics say that one child from four lives below the national poverty line and 8% of children are living in severe poverty. These children have no access to basic services: water, electricity, care, education and may be open to exploitation and abuse, expulsion and violence. Most affected children, as well as ethnicity, are by far those from the Roma families. Regarding the minimum wage, 179 euros, Romania is the second lowest in the EU.