Fundatia Increderea (FI) is a registered charity based in Oradea in the North East of Romania, very close to the Hungarian border. Established in 1997 FI was the vision of Susannah Collins who wanted to do something to help people deal with the problem of alcoholism and to improve the care they received.

Susannah is the daughter of Frank and Val Collins, who are members of ChristChurch, and she shared her vision with Campbell Edmondson also a member of ChristChurch who felt called to help Susannah establish FI. Frank and Campbell are UK Trustees for FI and were joined by Glenys, Campbell’s wife, two years ago.
Karen Budde, a psychiatric nurse from Denver in the USA ,also helped establish FI and she remains a major supporter of the work.

The FI team comprises 4 Romanians who are all Christians.

Ligia Popoviciu is the administrator dealing with the month to month paperwork and she spends a lot of time dealing with the Primaria (town council) who lease premises to FI and who are very dependent on the team as there are no governmental or statutory organisations to provide social care for alcoholics. Currently she has responsibility for writing grant applications to the EU to try to secure long term funding for the work.

Nelu and Christina Radu lead the education and prevention programme. They visit schools in the city and surrounding area going into classrooms to discuss and highlight issues around alcohol and drug abuse; smoking and sexual health matters. They also run the Increderea Club for children and young people from families affected by alcohol usually parental alcohol abuse. They also lead Summer Camps for up to 40 of these young people, many of whom would never otherwise leave home. As a result some have given their lives to Christ.

Christi Masaric leads the counselling programme for alcoholics on both an individual and group basis. Although there are parallels with the Alcoholics Anonymous “steps” he has built in Christian Foundations to the programme. He is also an Orthodox Priest with a congregation that consists of deaf people.

All the members of the team have visited Wrexham and as well as visiting organisations such as CAIS have attended ChristChurch presenting their work to the fellowship and leading the service.

ChristChurch supports FI through regular financial support; through prayer support and contributes to the costs of the Summer Camps.  Campbell, Glenys and Frank regularly visit Romania and in 2009 a number of people from ChristChurch travelled out to assist with the running of the Summer Camp.

Recent Photos of the team