“A very poor family was living in an American city. There were two parents who had a little boy. At a certain moment, because of the poverty, the father died. The mother, knowing she was going to die soon as well, called her son and told him: “Look, your father died. And, soon, I am going to die too. And I’m going to go to heaven, where I will meet him again. But you will not be left alone! What you need to do is go to the city square and wait. Because Jesus will come, take you and take care of you!” Short time after this, the mother died, as well. The very next morning, the boy went to the city square, just as his mother had told him to. He sat on a rock, in the center of the square, and waited. In the morning, no one asked him anything; the same in the afternoon. But in the evening, when everybody was leaving the square, a man came to the little boy and said: “I saw you in the morning, when you came here. And I saw you in the afternoon, as well, waiting… Now it’s evening, everybody’s leaving, and you’re still waiting. What are you waiting for?” The little boy told his story to the man and, in the end, he said: “And now I am waiting for Jesus Christ to come and take care of me”. Almost crying, this man said: “Look, Jesus Christ couldn’t come to take care of you right now, because He’s a little bit busy. But he sent me to take you and take care of you!”

          This is the story that determined Virgil Mihaila to start working with and for the children. In the autumn of 1992, willing to help the children, we started “Joseph” Foundation’s activity. Our help consisted in going to the train stations in Iasi, where we could find street children and beggars. And, every evening, we were offering them food. One of our main goals was to take under our protection the new comers in the streets and, thus, to protect them from the dangers of the streets.

          A next step in our activity was to rent three flats. We thought to offer these children a shelter. One apartment was for boys, one for girls and one for the office. The capacity of an apartment was of four places. But there were times when we were offering shelter to 22 children in both these apartments. This situation happened because we couldn't turn away children in need.

          Realizing we couldn’t continue our activity this way, we started the procedures for building a house, where we could offer food, shelter and a family-like environment for homeless children. We had started building this house in 1996 and, in 1998 we received the first children in there.

          Over time, with God’s help, we have been able to help over 200 children in Joseph House. Our main goal is to prepare these children for family reintegration (biological family, foster family or adoption). In achieving this goal, we’re helped by many professional workers (psychologist, social workers, etc).

          The “Joseph” Foundation is well-known as a Christian, non-profit and apolitical organization.