Nicoleta Iagăru

Nicoleta Iagăru paints in acrylic, most often flowers — lilac, peonies, poppies, roses, pansies — but also winter landscapes, the sea and portraits. She is the president of the Fiți Buni Association in Caracal, through which, together with her husband, Father Ion Iagăru, the priest of Caracal Municipal Hospital, she brings gifts to children in hospital, takes children to the seaside, and gives new winter boots and hearing aids to those who need them.

On the paediatric ward of Caracal Municipal Hospital, where the people of the hospital church came every Saturday with sweets, clothes and toys, she used to paint the faces of the children being treated there. “My wife, who has this gift from God, painting, brings joy this way to the children of the paediatric ward,” Father Ion Iagăru told Ziarul Lumina in 2018.

In 2019, for “Mărțișorul speranței”, the 1 March charity fair in the hospital’s hall, she made 100 small jars of papaya jam with 24-carat edible gold leaf, sold at 100 lei each. The money raised, about 10,000 lei, paid for antibacterial linoleum in the Neonatology ward and in the Bacteriology and Parasitology unit.

The Fiți Buni Association was entered in Romania’s national register of NGOs in 2020, in Caracal, and since then the campaigns that start from the hospital church are also run through it. Nicoleta Iagăru is its president; the association calls Father Ion Iagăru the initiator of its projects and an honorary member. Among them: the Christmas gifts “Zâmbește! Familia (noastră) te iubește!” for children in hospital, the free camp “Vreau și eu la mare!”, the new boots of “Desculț am fost și m-ați încălțat!”, the hearing aids given together with Audionova and the free hearing tests in the parishes of Olt.

In July 2025 she was with Father Ion at the “Pedalăm în siguranță!” camp: four days on bicycles through the Băluța Gorges, in Mehedinți, for hard-of-hearing children to whom the association had given hearing aids. “If their world seems silent, it is our duty to fill it with gestures that speak,” she told Media10 before the camp. Afterwards, in the letter she signed as the association’s president: “The children were delighted; we felt their warm hearts, we felt them HAPPY.”

Across the Danube, around Vidin, the association is known as “Бъди добър” — “Be good”. At Christmas and at Easter it takes gifts to kindergartens, to the children’s ward of the Vidin hospital and to an old people’s home, together with the Romanian Cultural Centre in Vidin. In December 2023, in Belogradchik, the Bulgarian press quoted the association’s president: “It makes no difference whether it is a holiday or not — with us the saying is: never leave an outstretched hand, neither when you are given to nor when you are asked” (translated from Bulgarian). In January 2026, when the association gave 160 parcels to children in the Vidin region and to the residents of an old people’s home in the Bregovo municipality, she told reporters that the association had organised joint exhibitions and other charity events with children from Bulgaria and Romania.

On 24 January 2023, at an evening dedicated to Romanian culture and to Mihai Eminescu’s anniversary, she opened her painting exhibition “Scânteie de culori” (Sparks of Colour) in Vidin, in the hall of the Tsvyat 1870 community centre, organised by the Romanian Cultural Centre in Vidin together with the Fiți Buni Association. The money from the sale of the paintings went to the association, for the children of the Vidin region; she also spoke of her wish for a cultural link between the House of Culture in Caracal and the one in Vidin. In January 2025 she exhibited again at the same community centre.

In 2023 she received a diploma of excellence for her part in organising the conference “Arta de a trăi frumos și sănătos” (The Art of Living Well and Healthily) in Slatina, and in 2024 a diploma of excellence from the Clubul Femeilor Puternice (Strong Women’s Club) for promoting the community’s values.

Sources: facebook.com (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), evenimentdeolt.ro, data.gov.ro, chitalishta.com.