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dana bates

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,” becoming agents of change 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 the Orthodox Christian Mission Center and her partners. Dana converted to Orthodoxy in 2003 and went on to get his PhD at the 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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