Nursing care for orphan children in hospitals

My name is Clinton Misamore.  I am a Field Program Officer for GlobalGiving.  Over the past three months I have been visiting GlobalGiving projects throughout Russia.  On June 15th, 2011, I had the unique opportunity to visit with Petersburg Parents in St. Petersburg, Russia.  I was toured around by Lena Lashkova (International Communications Coordinator.)  Lena provided a tremendously thorough overview of the project and programmatic areas of Petersburg Parents.  In addition to this discussion, I had the opportunity to visit the "nursing project" directly.  It was located in one of the nine state medical institutions that Petersburg Parents is operating in.  

The nurses provide care to the orphan children--all of whom were sleeping when I arrived.  After looking at the small children, the nurses smiled and kindly informed me that it was nap time.  

Adequate nursing coverage can be problematic in Russia as it is in many countries around the world.  Petersburg Parents is trying to narrow that gap by providing these orphan children with more in depth treatment and care.  There are approximately 35-50 children receiving daily treatment from over 10 qualified nurses.  In addition to the nursing program Petersburg Parents also works in other programmatic areas that are worth mentioning.  These areas include but are not limited to:

-customized medical assistance

-voluntary services and volunteer placements

-adoption portal

-material contributions

-painting art in childrens wards

-social adaptation programs

It was an amazing personal experience to find out more about the operations of Petersburg Parents as well as to interact with their team.  The organization has established a strong network of hundreds of volunteers that beleive in this movement.  I think that is a testimonial in and of itself.  In fact, no other organiztion I interacted with in Russia had as much support from a voluntary level as did Petersburg Parents.

I would like to kindly recognize and sincerely thank Lena  and everyone else who made this visit possible.  GlobalGiving is proud to be in collaboration with such a top notch organization and we look forward to working with you in the years to come.