![Lena]()
Lena
There are phenomena that affect absolutely everyone, whether they like it or not.
Over the past two years, everyone has learned the words: covid, virus, pandemic. It is unlikely that there is a person or family in Russia who has not been touched by this disease and the need to defend against it, to be vaccinated, to protect oneself and loved ones. Many had to fight the virus, and often even fight for their lives. That is why I really want to tell a story about one girl who took up the fight against covid for the sake of everyone.
My name is Tatiana Sergeevna, I am a teacher of the Big Change charity foundation. We support young people with experience of orphanhood, help children get an education and become independent. The wards of the foundation are the residents or graduates of orphanages and psycho-neurological boarding schools. Our students are people who are not particularly expected to achieve professional success.
If they find some unskilled work - and that's considered to be good enough. However, they prove every year that a person is able to overcome any circumstances and obstacles on their way to professional and personal goals: to get an education, a desired job, find a place in life, inspire and even save the lives of others!
One student Lena has been in the children’s institutional system from the first day of her life. Her mother died in childbirth. Then she went through a baby house, an orphanage and a correctional boarding school. At the age of 14, Lena was left alone in a room which she inherited in a Moscow communal apartment. It was 1994 and such things sadly happened at that time. She was simply brought there from the boarding school and left to live by herself. She had to establish contact with the new world on her own and without experience of the outside world. There was no manual to read, no everyday skills learned and no acquaintances. Luckily, she managed to get a part-time job in a stall next to her house and was given food as a payment.
At the age of 16 Lena took her first step towards her already formed, but not fully completed dream - she began working as a junior nurse in a hospital. Hard, poorly paid work proved the thought in her soul that the idea of helping people was for her. For 15 years of work in the hospital, she has become a first-class specialist and would have gone further long ago: many years of experience and knowledge appeared in practice, and mercy and care seemed to be born with her. But until now there she did not have even a certificate for the 9th grade. Without it, she could not enter a medical college, which meant she you could not become a nurse.
How many people will go to school after 30? Not many, but Lena went. And she did not give up, even when they found breast cancer. We worked hard at the centre, supporting her with her studies, with her fight against the disease and financially. She studied and underwent chemotherapy sessions, studied and went into remission, studied and never complained about life ...
Three years ago, Lena successfully graduated from college and got a job as a nurse in the surgical department of a Moscow hospital. Since March 2020, the medical facility has been assigned for patients with COVID-19.
For a year and a half, that is the entire pandemic, Lena has worked in the red zone with the most severe patients and continues to nurse patients throughout. Hours of shifts, fatigue, lack of food and water - all this was not scary for Lena, as her main focus was to help. She is a star nurse and a medic from God. Attentive, selfless, devoted - for her every patient is important, every person must live, she lives, which means we are living as well! Lena, like no one, knows how to appreciate this life and as if not to notice all the difficulties in her way. I have a good relationship with all my students at The Big Change, but Lena is a special case, she is my role model and motivator! And it is not clear who gave more to whom: "The Big Change" to Lena or Lena to our team!
Thank you so much for supporting us and give us an opportunity to continue our common cause! We hope you are inspired and continue to support Big Change educational program in 2022. We can’t do it without you!
![Our student Lena]()
Our student Lena
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