Cluj, Romania
1,000+
£Ongoing
The Lost & Found project has been set up by Pastor Cornel Fedor and supported by Link to Hope. His aim was to start a project when he saw how many people felt lost in this modern world and very individual society and how hopeless and desperate they felt.
“Through the Lost & Found projects we give them help and assistance, we guide them and help them to find themselves in this world. We spend hundreds of hours on the road, talking, making papers, going to different hospitals, filling out papers and all requirement for contracts and completing forms.
We believe and we know this is vital because we did see that the enormous help we have given to so many and peoples in this year have helped them.
We have a list of over 48 cases that we have helped in this time.
Thank you so much and we want to tell you we really want to carry on with this project
Update – February 2025
‘We thank you very much for all the support we have received to help the elderly, lonely, poor and helpless who are lost in this age of technology and modernism.
With the arrival of the cold season and the frosty winter, in all the villages and areas where we do our mission, we encounter dozens of poor and sick elderly people, many families with huge needs mired in poverty, and sick and lonely people who desperately seek help from us and our organization. With your help we do our best to bring support and hope to them.
Supporting elderly individuals is a cause close to our hearts. Our dedicated team conducts regular visits to assist seniors and others in need in various capacities, ensuring their well-being and enhancing their quality of life. We have shared a few cases with you below.
Mr. Danila is 78 years old and has never had any family around. Coming from a very complicated and destitute life, he now shelters in a tiny little room 8 meter square. Everything he has is in his little room. There is no running water, no modern facilities and no technology. Every day he wakes up early in the morning and goes looking for work from people and comes home late at night. All he has is an old bed (which is actually a sofa) a little table and an old stove.
He sought us out and desperately asked for help. During our visit we assisted him to create an online account for electricity and formed a folder in the effort to try to get treatment for his many medical conditions. Mr Danila has lung cancer, asthma and serious liver problems and has lived his whole life in the cold, without basic hygiene and nutrition. He is in a very desperate situation and our help through your supported program is vital for him.
Mrs Saveta is an 81 -year-old widow who is lonely and disconnected from all is this modern era. She worked all her life on communist farm land and now only has her retirement pension, around 100 Euro. Mrs Saveta has skin cancer along with many other medical problems. We assisted her with all her bill payments and as much medical support as we can. As her income is so low, and costs are high (wood for heating and cooking is about 350 Euro) we regularly provide basic food assistance. She is so happy to receive the help and optimistic about surviving the struggles with our support. In our last visit she asked us to send you her appreciation and love.
The Varga family have 8 children and a couple of them have health issues. One of the children has Downs syndrome and another has to use a mechanical machine to breathe most of the time. This modern world does not seem to care about such a poor family and they are neglected and left behind. Through our young mother program and our Lost and Found program we make all the visits and do what we can and it is good to see a little progress. We hope to be able to continue the support and counseling and help them to keep going on.
You need to know your support and programs make a huge difference in their life. We thank you a lot for all support.
We visited the Macu sisters, George who is 4 years old and Iza is 6 years old, and their father Mr. Macu who is 48 year old. Their mom left them several years ago and never returned. They only have one room and an old stove, without running water or a bathroom or anything to wash.
We provided them with groceries, essential food and assistance in their needs. We were surprised to see how happy the little sisters were with their candy. In the ghetto where the live no one says a kind word to them and there is no one to guide these little girls in their growing up. They do not get the care, counselling or education they so desperately need. It is so painful to see a father struggling to survive in such difficult conditions and unimaginable in the year 2025.
Update – JULY 2024
Many greetings, dear friends.
After a long and difficult winter, with huge prices for wood and gas, we now have a spring with stormy rains that destroy everything that has been planted. The big companies that provide utilities have found a loophole in legislation in Romania and have made huge estimates on bills affecting everyone. People don’t know how to sort this out knowing they will be disconnected if they don’t pay or appeal in writing via email to the companies.
The companies don’t care that there is no internet in the villages and most people do not have computers & don’t know how to formulate complaints and appeals.
We have had dozens of people who come to us daily with payment demands and exaggerated invoices often more than 10 times the value of their pensions, looking to us to solve their problems. We stay with each of them to understand their problems, helping them to formulate appeals and prove the estimates are exaggerated and send emails with this information to the utility companies. There are no offices in the villages and nothing can be solved over the phone. And it is not just the utility companies; it is now their taxes, tv and firewood departments.
So we use our resources to travel from place to place, from village to village, meeting with desperate elderly and neglected people, listening to their problems and supporting them however we can. We teach them how to organise the papers they receive and keep track of their appeals. This is very difficult as many people are almost illiterate and have no understanding of computers or why this is all happening to them.
Our heart is broken at every step by so much suffering that we find in the lives of old and lost people in modern times, but they give thanks for the help we give and we rejoice that you are a blessing to these lost people. They thank you because with your help we can read them an invoice, a contract, make requests to the local authorities, make a complaint to the utilities, guide their steps for every problem and we are with them with our “bag with science” (laptop). Week by week, they hope, trust and wait patiently for us.
We thought this project would be temporary and would stop very soon but it is far from possible to stop this now because more and more people, widows, old people and many single people come to us desperately asking for our help to find a way to solve their problems. Thank you so much.
O yes, we thank you and all the sponsors and donors for your constant support in this project. Because you exist we can do this great thing to help the ‘lost’ peoples in any circumstance to found the way and the path toward solution.
May God bless you abundantly! Kindest regards
Cornel
Mr Marian is 80 and lives in a village with a dead end. One of his friends had asked for help and he mentioned Mr Marian’s problems. Mr Marian has severe medical issues and problems with mobility so couldn’t go to renew his water and electricity contracts. In one day the water and electricity were cut. He has no computer or and tried to call the company but just got a ‘robot’ on the other end. For more than a month he struggled to solve the situation with no results. Through our project ‘ lost and found’ we were able to put together all the papers had helped him to apply online for these services. Finally we had success and Mr Marian is so thankful because you exist and make this possible.
In another village Mr Petru, 83, was in a worse situation but with the same problem. ‘Uncle’ Petru is a very small man and in recent years had his right leg amputated from the hip. He is alone, without a disability pension, without any help and support, with very little knowledge of the modern world apart from a 20-year-old phone. He was a diligent and hardworking man in his youth, a great carpenter, but diabetes, disability and loneliness are grinding him down. His television was cut off, his radio broke down, the postman stopped bringing his monthly retirement pension and he lost his medical card so the family doctor no longer gave him his prescriptions. That is how we found him and we started the long road of fighting modernism and bureaucracy. Through your help we gave him hope and a little rest and comfort. It was a long list of things that was needed, with many papers and letters to be fill out, but in the end we smiled together. From all of his ‘little body’ he sends you his love, thanks and appreciation.
Rebeca
Rebeca finished only 8 classes, we motivated, encouraged and spend a lot of time with her and her family to fill out all the forms and make all the papers needed to keep go to school. She is the first ever girl who go to high school from that area.
Maria Coste
We are working with Maria Coste, a very nice old lady. Maria was born in 03 December 1920, and for many years she didn’t know how to pay the bills, go to doctors and go somewhere to pay taxes etc. Now she is 97 years old she lives by herself. She is a widow and has been single from 39 years ago. Last time when Maria went out from her house and front yard was 16 years ago except to go to 2 or 3 house around, or out from village or to some shop etc.
We try to explained to her all the political changes, money changes, technology and cell phones … She is totally lost in this world. She can’t handle this. We spend a lot of time around her and your project is a big big help for her.
Daniel & family
Another situation is Daniel family. He is single, his wife left him and their child Ionan when she was four years old. He has single handedly raised Ioana with is in the 3rd grade and 9 years old. Daniel had never left Gherla. However he had to Cluj for an appointment with the Psychiatric doctor for Ioana’s depression. He asked us for help saying that he can’t manage the situation of going to Cluj. I was with him and spend days making papers and visit many doctors. Daniel was extremely grateful for the help.
Boby
Boby is another person who never left Gherla. Due to the fact that he was born with some problems, no-one took him to the doctors and he never had a chance of going to school.
With the charities help he was able to visit a doctor in Cluj and for the first time and he now has an ID card, has had an investigation by the doctor and some treatment. Now at 21 years old he have a chance to be integrated a little bit into normal life. When he went to Cluj he was so surprised to see there were so many buildings and many cars in a big city like Cluj. He was worried we might get lost and not know our way back to Gherla. He and his parents is so thankful for our foundation help.