Refuseniks.ru

Caring for abandoned children was taken by volunteers

The civilian movement of assistance to abandoned children, of whom parents refused and who do not care about the state, began with an Internet site. Now it is a powerful organization of volunteers for whom other people's children are just children who need their help. The New Times talked with volunteers
The philosopher by education Elena Alshanskaya six years ago was with a little daughter in a regular district district hospital. Lying with her daughter in the hospital ward, Elena could not understand why children were crying behind the wall all day and no one approaches them. The nurses explained: these children are refuseniks, that is, those whom mothers left in the hospital or whom the guardianship authorities from dysfunctional families seized. Such children live in hospitals for months until it was decided where to send them: to the child’s house, an orphanage or a foster family.

Otkazniki.ru
“I was struck by the situation in the hospital are defenseless children,” says Alshanskaya. - I wrote about this on my blog, told my friends. We began to go around hospitals, brought diapers, clothes, food there. They met information about the number of refuseniks in the hospitals of the Moscow Region, wrote this to Governor Boris Gromov, to the prosecutor's office. ” Elena recalls that at first the authorities did not want to listen to her and carefully pretended that there was no such problem at all.

Then the Otkazniki.ru website appeared, and now Yandex to the word “refuseniks” gives links not only to the committee of soldiers' mothers and evading military service, but also on the story of children living in hospitals.

The volunteers have achieved their: May 16, 2007, the Moscow Regional Duma adopted a bill, which allowed the regional budget to add additional funding for the maintenance of abandoned children and additional rates for teaching staff in hospitals. Previously, when this law was not, the volunteers themselves paid for the work of the nannies who looked after the children. (Bets allocated by the state are negligible, and volunteers still pay extra to the nurses.-The New Times.)

“Today, of course, the situation is not perfect,” says Alshanskaya, “but it is better than it was. Continuing to help the hospital near Moscow, we try to switch to the regions. Attempts to change the legislation at the federal level have not yet been crowned with success: we were explained that financing of refuseniks in hospitals is the issue of the regional budget. ” Such volunteer organizations are already successfully working in Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk.

Carried mothers
The vice-president of the Foundation “Volunteers to help orphans” Anna Vinogradova, a tense schedule: take the child to the music lesson, call the hospitals to find out what they need, then call the coordinators to send volunteers there. The fund has no office: there are not enough money for renting the premises, the founders prefer to spend private donations and sponsorship money on projects, which are becoming more and more every year.

“I accidentally learned about the problem of refuseniks on one of the children's tourist races,” Anna recalls, “where did I come with my children. There they had to collect diapers, but the girl who was entrusted with this did not come there. As a result, I collected all the diapers. Then I read the story of Lena Alshanskaya about how the refuseniks live in the hospital, and decided that I should help these children. I remember how I phoned the hospitals near Moscow and persuaded the chief doctors to allow them to bring diapers and other help to them-not everyone agreed: the information about the refuseniks was closed, and the doctors were afraid because of excessive frankness to lose their jobs. But there were those who told the truth. One manager simply burst into tears on the phone: it turned out that the last washing machine broke in her hospital and the children had to be wrapped in rags. I went and brought them diapers. ” In February 2007, Elena Alshanskaya and other volunteers realized that if they want to seriously deal with the problem of orphans, they need to change the status of the organization. The volunteer charity foundation was registered to help orphans. It was clear to the founders that it was not enough only to bring diapers to hospitals, to make repairs in the wards for refuseniks, to influence legislative activities, to create a system of public control over orphan institutions.

Today, volunteers have four large warehouses, where they keep all the gathered help, one of them has been paying for the same sponsor for several years. People who want to help can take diapers or children's things and to the collection points that are arranged in apartments or in garages. The fund has developed its own clear logistics: apartments - warehouse - hospitals, and not only in the suburbs. Strict accounting is kept. Reports are posted on the site, presented to sponsors. “This is very important: we already have a certain reputation, some companies learn that their colleagues successfully cooperated with us, and also treat them,” says Anna.

Not depend on the state
One of the last projects that volunteers are now engaged in is called "Children in trouble." “These are sir-orphans who can be cured, and then they will get a chance for a normal life,” says Anna. “Such children we pay for the nanny, who is with them around the clock in the hospital.” Anna also talks about other projects of the fund: about helping crisis families, about the assistance of the construction of children in families, that volunteers drive and photograph children in orphanages, because those photos that are in the federal database are of very poor quality.

The average age of those who created the organization of assistance to abandoned children is 30 years. Basically, these are family women with children, representatives of the middle class who have a reliable rear - husbands who earn money for life and allow wives to engage in charitable business.

“People who grew up in the 80s, as a rule, are alien to Soviet ideas that the state will do and decide everything for them,” says Elena Alshanskaya. “He will not and will not decide, then we must decide.”

According to experts of the CAF -Russia Foundation, in Russia, thousands of non -state organizations are engaged in charitable and professional assistance to children.

They collect charity assistance for medicines and expensive surgery in Russia and abroad:
• patients with oncological diseases,
• patients with congenital diseases of the heart and nervous system,
• Patients with rare diseases.

They collect money:
• to pay for seats for sick orphans,
• To help children with disabilities,
• To help children-autists for whom there is no state support system,
• To help children with Down syndrome.

They collect money and purchase for hospitals:
• Medical equipment,
• medications, dressings, financing of which is not provided for by the budget.

They provide professional assistance:
• Crisis families,
• adoptive parents,
• foster families,
• Graduates of orphanages and boarding schools.