Background Info

Hello dear friends,

My name is Serghei Mihailov and I am the Executive Director of Beginning of Life ministry in Moldova. Ten years ago I became a volunteer for Beginning of Life while I was a student of University Divitia Gratiae. I used my experience in journalism and storytelling to write articles and conduct interviews for Beginning of Life This experience gave me a unique opportunity to see and profoundly understand what BoL is and how its team helps people in need. I was so inspired by this ministry, that I desired to become part of the BoL team. 

In August 2008, Vladimir Ubeivolc (president and co-founder of BOL) invited me to join BOL. That was one of those special days that remain with me. My dream became a reality. This ministry has a special focus on a deep understanding of the roots of people’s vulnerability in crisis and poverty. We combine that with relevant and innovative responses to these problems for the sake of restoring the dignity and integrity of people in Moldova. This approach is critical to me because I knew from personal experience what it means to grow up in a vulnerable family, with addictions, poverty, and marginalization. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, both of my parents lost their jobs. We felt what it is like for poverty and crisis to enter and ruin our home. As a result of this deep personal crisis, in 1994 my parents divorced. My mother went to work as a heavy loader at a vegetable depot, and I began to work as a night cleaner in a construction building. Because of the unhealthy environment, loneliness, and heavy work my mother began to fall into alcoholism. At that time I started attending an evangelical church, and these two different worlds came into deep dissonance and clash.  During Easter 1999, I finally found myself on the street, having nowhere to go. My aunt Alla opened the door for me to her family, where she already was caring for three children and an old disabled grand