Baby Houses
Baby Houses in Russia are institutions in which orphans are
raised from birth to age six. Many of these babies and children have parents who
are unable to care fore them due to their living circumstances, personal
problems, or economic difficulties. Some of these babies are disabled and their
parents do not have the resources to care for them. All of these children
benefit from extra care and attention that overworked, unpaid and untrained baby
house staff members do not always have the resources to give.
The Baby Houses are not always well equipped to care for
these children and their specials needs. Members of the Charities Group visit
the Baby Houses, play with the children and give them individual attention.
Also, they try to set an example for the staff by showing the children are not
unwanted and are worth the effort. The volunteers try to help the staff as well,
with educational programs, donations of medical equipment, medicine and food,
care products and toys.
Being a Baby House volunteer means visiting as much or as
little as your schedule permits – as part of a team of women who soon become
friends. It is not necessary that you personally go every time, just that the
team as a group visits more or less regularly. Every volunteer chooses the
amount of time she is able to donate.
The Baby Houses we support are scattered around Moscow and probably there is one near you.
Internats/Orphanages
Internats are orphanages
for children older than 5 and younger than 18 years of age. Today’s reality
is that the majority of children are social and economic orphans; i.e. with
parents or relatives unable to take care of them. Most Russian orphans spend
over 10 years in an institution and are badly equipped to enter society: they
suffer from poor self-image, have less than adequate education and have no
emotional and financial support. Those 15.000 children living in Russian
orphanages every year are subject to more violence, neglect, drug abuse,
poverty, homelessness and suicide than anywhere else in the world. (Source:
UNICEF)
Our main objective
is therefore to help those young adults entering the real world. That is why we
hope you will volunteer to visit the orphanages the IWC supports. First of all,
we ensure that they are provided with the essential things of life: food,
medicine, vitamins, clothing, school materials, etc…Secondly, we support
educational and psychological projects in existing organizations: computer
lessons, English lessons, arts and crafts, life skill projects like AIDS
information lectures. Our volunteers can continue exciting projects, coordinate
them or create new ones themselves so that orphans have a good chance of
surviving when leaving the orphanage.
Let me illustrate some of our activities, which make a real difference: in one internat, the IWC helped the Russian organization RODNIK to set up a computer room and the children have computer classes now. We also support ROOF, the Russian-English organization that provides education in internats and to orphan graduates. To several other internats and an orphanage outside Moscow, we brought food, vitamins, clothing and school materials. In several other internats, we supplied necessities, school materials, vitamins, and organized general medical check ups. If you have some time and want to get involved, please do not hesitate to contact us on iwc_charities@yahoo.com