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