Stuart and Angela first saw the conditions of the Romanian orphanages on the news, it was after seeing this.....they knew they had to help
October 1992 was our first ever trip to Romania
We found a local church group who were going to a town called Zalu in Northwest Transylvania and tagged along. Angela at that time was a preschool manager in Gosport so she used her skills to stay for 10 days in the kindergarten showing the teachers how to play with the toys we had bought and to include the children. I used my years of experience in the building trade to fit showers, in an orphanage for handicapped children, they had been showering in awful conditions and could not believe it when they had hot water once we had finished……. bless them!
We came back home forever changed and just knew this would become our life’s work to help these people.
We started showing photos in churches, telling of the awful things we had seen, and this led to us collecting aid from local people.
Our five children would tell you stories of house being full of aid and them having no space to sit!
We collected enough aid and raised enough funds to take out to fifteen surrounding villages.
see below the many other missions we setup.....
We setup six or seven village kindergartens (Angela spent over a month in Romania when we set up the kindergartens, working with the teachers and parents)
We built a piggery to help the villages become self-sufficient.
We sent approximately six artics per year and a team of volunteers.
We bought a building and made it into a distribution centre so families could come along and get clothes, food, etc.
Christmas was delivering lorry loads of toys
Handing out Toys and Food, dressed as Santa
We have always believed and still do, that we must be good stewards of what God provides.
It is important to personally make sure the aid gets to where it is supposed to go, I have personally been to Romania on mission trips over 150 times.
All our four children over the years have been on mission trips and even some of our grandchildren!
At the start of it all, Angela was a preschool manager, and I had my own business, we both decided to give up our jobs, even though we had a house to pay for, and five children to feed.
One of our children, Daniel we adopted age one, is severely disabled and totally blind, so as you can see, this mission was a leap of faith.
Our Romanian side of the team, although now independent are in a much better situation than the 1990s and are still active today and we visit when we can.
In doing this work we started to notice Gosport also needed help and firmly believing that charity starts at home, we also started work here.....but that is a whole other story, and I have been told to limit my words for the purpose of the website.
More recently our long-standing friendship with Romania kicked back in when the Ukraine invasion struck, we were quickly able to establish contacts who could take us into Ukraine with aid collected from Gosport and the surrounding areas.
Please see our other page for Ukraine.
When Ian and Stuart went to Romania in 2022, they bought £1000 of food. (It is sometimes easier and cheaper to buy the food there, rather than buy and transport it from the UK) This was then destined for the Roma camp. Ian and Stuart where then helped by a guide to deliver the food to the camp.
Jacobs Well Care Centre
Toronto Place, Gosport, PO12 4UZ
Website: www.jacobswell.charity
Email: enquiries@jacobswellcarecentre.co.uk
Telephone: 023 9258 3050
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Charity Number: 1104075