Our Backstory

Our Back Story

The VIATA (“the Life”) Adventure Education camp (1999-present)

Back in about 2007, on a trip to visit my parents and the orphanage they founded in Romania, I was seized literally in the middle of the night by the vision of starting an adventure education camp in Romania. Through a swarm of Providential connections and blessings, we came to Romania in 1999 with a group of volunteers from Gordon College and built Romania’s first ropes course and adventure camp. (That we did this all with volunteers as a servie-project is point of which I am particularly proud!) We ended up in a beautiful but grimy coal mining region in the Carpathian mountains that was highly industrialized and polluted due to the insane industrial legacy of Communism. To give an idea, think of Mordor from Lord of the Rings (the grimy communist blocks, coal process plants, river black with pollution air yellowed with sulfurous soot) next to the beauty of the Shire (Retezat National Park). A place of contrasts indeed!

Subsequently, we traversed the US, East to West coast, living out of a van and garnering sponsorships for the camp. Our motto was “go big or go home”, so in 2000 we took over 500 youth through the best week of their lives. Since that first summer, we have taken close to 20,000 youth through a week that was truly transformational. We never imagined how powerful and relevant adventure education and experiential learning would be for the post-Communist trauma of learned helplessness, interpersonal mistrust, and corruption. We have thousands of testimonials and solid social scientific studies showing that the camp has statistically significant raises in interpersonal trust, caring for others, and other virtues. Was a commitment to God and each other in their group (usually 10-15) to live according to the Way.

Our “Baptism” into the realities of corruption

When we moved here in 1999, we knew we needed partners to make it, so we partnered with the local mountain rescue organization (Salvamonts). While at first this seemed a huge blessing, money began disappearing with bizarre explanations. This went on for years; our accountant and the head of the Salvamonts pretending not to trust each other, but secretly meeting weekly to hatch plots. One included impersonating Romanian IRS officials (Garda Financiara) which is felony level stuff. Irregularities were occurring often, but we could not put our finger on anything concrete. Providentially though, in time we found a way to turn the tables. We caught our accountant red handed in stealing a thousand or so dollars, and were taking her straight to police. She panicked and told me “Dana, you have been so good to me. I want to come clean; you don’t know half of the story. and she handed me a special agenda where all of their plots were documented.

Long story short, after sharing our story with a local Orthodox businessman/philanthropist (and if this person would not help us, we were going to leave Romania) we ended up hiding a video camera in our house, tricking the Salvamont leader into confessing and going to the FBI in Bucuresti as we were afraid and felt we could not trust the local police. The FBI laughed at us, asking us “what do you think we do here at the FBI?” Human trafficking investigations and other big items. They told us “you have to go to the local police and make a formal accusation. They chuckled and said “but we will keep your tape in case they try and whack you”.

In reality, the FBI visit did not mean much; but psychologically, it had a huge effect on our local law enforcement as we announced the fact far and wide. “Ohh, why so serious” was often the response. Years later, we won the trial. Praise God, justice is done? But no, matters were only getting started. Even though this local Savamont leader was a felon and continuing as a “public servant”, and on the mayor’s council, it seemed like nothing changed. I started pushing to have him removed (we felt like we had to challenge corruption if we wanted to challenge the youth to fight it), and they pushed back. They basically let me know that if I kept pushing on his removal, they would pay a street kid to say he/she was sexually molested and have me removed from the country.

This experience had a profound impact on us. We realized that this is what most of the world goes through on a daily basis. In some countries ⅓ to ½ of their famly budget is to pay for bribes. Instead of making us want to leave Romania, it convinced us that we should dig in as we believed the experiential education programs can have a bit impact on the corruption mindset of take, not make. We thus orientated our programs towards fighting corruption, as corruption is individual and structural sin. It is probably the #1 problem for poverty reduction around the world. We also focused heavily on social capital development, developing the values that promote teamwork and contribution to the common good.

IMPACT youth clubs: our blessed accident

In about 2002 in the midst of this battle with corruption,, we realized that we needed some type of follow-up program to our Viata summer camp. After much research, we stumbled upon a pedagogy called “service-learning” and through trial error, pieced together a youth model that is now in about 50 countries around the world and core youth programming for World Vision.

I still, after 23 years, believe in the power of youth and experiential learning. The reason why is that it is so multifaceted, multidimensional. It is leadership, fun, bonding, real community changes, character building, employability and entrepreneurial skills, but I think most importantly is that youth and leaders experience that deep joy in giving back, of paying it forward.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

(Rabindranath Tagore)

IMPACT, described in detail elsewhere on this site, is the main program we will be carrying around the world as mission specialists through OCMC!

Conversion, PhD & Romania Semester Abroad

Early in our time in Romania, I began to read seriously Orthodox theology, and especially Fr. Dumitru Staniloae, of Blessed Memory. Through this, and the friendship of a local priest, we converted to Orthodoxy in 2003, and I later received a PhD in Oxford on Orthodox Theology (esp Staniloae) in conversation with sustainable development at the Oxford Center for Missions Studies.

In tandem with my studies, we were able to leverage this and become a fully academically accredited Study-Abroad program though Northwestern College in Iowa. Among other things, we introduce Western students to Orthodox theology and ethos.

OCMC

Dana joined the Orthodox family as a missionary sending organization in the US. Before that he worked for 24 years with the wonderful people at Young Life. He is happy to be working directly through the Orthodox Church now.

Multi-country Missionary Youth Education & Ministry

Dana moved to an impoverished coal mining region in Romania in 1999. He developed Romania’s first adventure education and ropes course summer camp called Viata (“the Life” in Romanian), which has given around 700 youth a transformative summer camp experience every year and introduced them to the Orthodox Way of life. As a follow-up to the summer camp, Dana developed a service-learning model called IMPACT that, besides teaching all sorts of life-skills, introduces youth to Orthodoxy by living the “liturgy after the Liturgy” which means becoming change-agents in their communities. IMPACT has gone on to become a global best practice and is used in over fifty countries through organizations like World Vision. Dana has worked closely with the Romanian Orthodox Church and plans to share these experiential learning models throughout the world through www.ocmc.org and her partners. Dana converted to Orthodoxy in 2003, and went on to get his PhD at Oxford Centre for Missions Studies on Orthodox theology in dialogue with development studies (causes of poverty and well-being). Dana has two children, Briana Jelsa and Gabriel Matei. Their passions are hiking, mountain-biking, and spending time outdoors.

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