The ARCA/St. Dimitrie Project in Romania
 

 

In 1998, Dr. Webb responded to a call to assist the Romanian Prison Fellowship. She began by training social workers at the Gherla Prison in 12-step support groups and supplying medicines and medical equipment to a prison hospital in Dej. While she was in Romania, the staff at Prison Fellowship’s St. Nicholas Home for children of prisoners invited her to come and train their staff. The Director of the Babes-Boyai University invited her to teach a course on addiction to their psychology and social work students. She taught a basic addiction course in 1998 and 2000. On her first trip she realized the need for a long-term missionary who would help stabilize the fledgling AA and Al-Anon groups and started praying for someone to hear the call. One Sunday morning in 1998, two OCMC missionaries, Craig and Victoria Goodwin, whom Dr. Webb had met in Cluj, spoke at an Orthodox church in Tulsa, Oklahoma that Floyd Frantz, a licensed addictions counselor, attended.

Floyd heard the call that Sunday for needed help in dealing with the massive problem of alcoholism in Romania. The Goodwins recommended that Floyd contact Dr. Webb, who was planning a trip to Constantia that fall to train prison social workers. Floyd joined her as a short term missionary. Now convinced of the need, Floyd went back to Oklahoma to earn money restoring houses for a year to raise the funds to return.


In 2000, he returned to stay and stabilize AA, founded the St. Dimitrie outpatient clinic, hiring two of the psychologists who had been train by Dr. Webb. He also became an OCMC missionary.

Five years later, his projects include a program at Leon Daniello Tuberculosis Sanitarium, the outpatient program called St. Dimitrie at the St. Pantelimon free medical clinic, and a drop-in program at Casa Alba, a fellowship center for people in recovery. The St. Dimitrie Project is currently helping over 150 people reclaim their lives and is directly responsible for reducing the death rate at the tuberculosis sanitarium by 300%.

In 2000, Dr. Webb and Floyd held a joint meeting with physicians and professors at the local University for the purpose of starting an addiction counselor training program. As a result of that meeting, in 2001, the first addiction counseling training began through ARCA, the Association in Romania of Counselors in Addictions. ARCA now holds training sessions once a month. Their counselors-in-training have also worked in the detoxification unit of the psychiatric hospital, the Gherla maximum security prison, and several villages near Cluj.

Every year, GOAL sends a team to help in both the training of counselors through ARCA as well as supporting Floyd Frantz, St. Dimitrie, and the St. Nicholas Home. In 2005, a GOAL team went to Galliti, Romania, on the Danube River in SE Romania, to train the staff of the Word Made Flesh drop in center for street boys. The team also met with the President of the National Anti-Addiction Agency in Bucharest, thus initiating further cooperation, with the agency. Several of GOAL’s short term missionaries are considering a longer term commitment in Romania. To visit the St. Dimitrie Website, please click here.

To visit the OCMC website click here.
 

 


GOAL Project    E-mail:
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