Prepare 25 Russian Orphans for Adult Life

Thanks to your kind donations our programme to support teenagers soon to leave orphanages in St Petersburg starts this month. We will bring you news of how that is going once the sessions to prepare the teenagers for independent life have got going.

In the meantime we bring you pictures from this summer’s trip, a three-day hike through the Russian forest for teenage orphans, parents who grew up in orphanages and their children, and volunteer families from St Petersburg.

This is a fantastic opportunity for the teenagers to experiences family life, often for the first time, to become more determined and able to solve problems, and to make friends outside the orphanage who can help support them when they leave. If we meet our target, we’ll be able to ensure that a hike takes place in 2011 to crown our support through the school year.

A belated thank you for your generous donations. You all helped us pass the challenge with flying colours, so we now have a permanent place on the Global Giving site. More importantly, we have raised enough money to cover a whole year of weekly meetings to prepare teenagers in St Petersburg orphanages for life in the adult world.

Our Russian colleagues have been trying out the approach in a small way this year. Our grant will enable it to become a regular programme starting in September, when the orphanage school term starts up again.

We still have some way to go before we can fund the 3-day hike planned for 2011, including tents and other equipment that can be used year after year. We are hopeful that we will make it, but you can help by telling friends about our appeal. If you're on Facebook, why not add the Global Giving widget, which makes this really quick and easy.

Thanks again!

On 10th April the Sunflower club organised a meeting with the teenagers soon to leave Children’s Home no. 23. 8 girls came along to the meeting. Our aim was to get to know each other and to explain to them that the purpose of the meetings is to help them in the process of leaving the children’s home. After the meeting had ended the girls said, that the theme was very relevant to them, and that they hadn’t thought about these specific questions to do with going out into independent life (such as, what would you like to day on the day you leave the orphanage? What will you take with you?). They were all in favour of continuing our meetings. We plan to meet with this group again in May.