Cold "warm house": how philanthropists from Voronezh received millions and abandoned obligations

The Dagestan organization “Warm House on the Mountain” was repeatedly mentioned in the media as a place where women and children can hide from domestic violence, escape from persecution, get help and start a new life. But in January, the leaders of the “Teplny House” informed their wards that they were evicted from a crisis apartment in Makhachkala. Formal reasons like “internal disturbances” were revealed by others - from the part of the organization itself, whose leadership not only exploited the work of the wards, but also engaged in frank frauds in order to attract funds.

"We are to you twice with your ass"

The wards of the Dagestan shelter “Warm House on the Mountain” at the end of January sent a alarm message to reporters. Three women and eight children are evicted from a crisis apartment to the street. The basis, according to women, was their refusal to make repairs for free in the apartment where the wards lived earlier. Women said that Shelter’s leadership repeatedly sent them to wash, skin and paint the walls in the previous crisis apartment, which was “spoiled” by the children of the wards (the kids painted on the walls). I had to work for free, it happened that more than 10 hours a day. When they did not come to cleaning, the deputy director of the center Farid Bakhshiev threatened with eviction. “You will go to the street! I will not play with you anymore. You are with our ass, we are twice with your ass! ”She said to the ward, who complained about the temperature of the children, because of which mothers called an ambulance and could not go to clean the apartment (the recording of this and other conversations presented in the text is at the disposal of“ MBH Media ”).

On this, the story did not end, one after another different details began to pop up, which exhibit the organization “Warm House on the Mountain” in the best light. So, there were records of telephone conversations, where the guide of the shelter requires the wards to take part in the filming of a report for Swedish journalists. When women refuse, they are offered to collect things and evict from a crisis apartment.

The leadership of the shelter (director of Yevgeny Velichkin and her deputy Farid Bakhshiev) quickly responded to the indignation of their wards and extended an explanation on the media (the full text is at the disposal of “MBH Media”). They called their actions to evict women completely legitimate, and one of the wards was accused of deliberate provocation and bribery of the cohabitants.

The history of the conflict of the wards of the shelter was told by Svetlana Anokhina and Lida Mikhalchenko, it can be read in detail about her on the Daptar portal.

One of the arguments for evicting wards from Shelter is the lack of funds. The director of the “warm house on the mountain” Evgenia Velichkin told reporters that the grant to work is completed, there is no more money to pay for housing.

From Voronezh with love for pregnant women

The Organization "Warm House on the Mountain" has been operating in Makhachkala since 2017. Its leader Yevgeny Velichkin before the appearance in Dagestan was mentioned in the media as an employee of the Voronezh Center for the Support of Maternal and Childhood “Angel-Guardian”. Judging by the information on the site, the center has been working in Voronezh since 2012, although the report on its activities has been published only in 2017 and 2018. The director of the center is Ilya Pilyugin, the former spouse of Eugene. “Warm House on the Mountain”-the project “Angel-Guardian”.

Why the Voronezh organization decided to expand the geography of its project precisely on Dagestan is unclear. Neither Evgeny Velichkin nor Ilya Pilyugin were connected with the North Caucasus, there were no information about any joint projects of the “Guardian Angel” and charitable or human rights organizations from Dagestan. The text of one of the applications for the grant states that “in 2016, the deputy director of the Center Evgeny Velichkin organized an initiative group in Dagestan, where she was engaged in betrayal counseling of pregnant women, a joint mini-conference was also held for students of medical educational institutions in the DGMU with the support of the Russian Youth Union of the Republic of Dagestan.”

It was not so difficult to oppose the presidential grant for working in Dagestan: in the category of “support of motherhood” there are practically no competitors, there are really few applications, and only the funds “Dagestan without orphans”, which are led by Raisat Osmanov, regularly received funds to work with women.

In 2017, the Autonomous Non-Profit Organization Center for Protection of Maternity and Childhood “Angel-Guard” won the presidential grant worth 1,618,300.00 rubles for the Maternity Support Center “Warm House on the Mountain”. “Within the framework of the project, we send our experienced trained employee to carry out activities on the“ Warm House on Mountain ”project in Dagestan under the patronage of ANO“ Angel-Guard ”as its branch to adopt experience and open a new non-profit organization Center for Motherhood Protection in Dagestan,” the application said.

For 1,618,300.00 rubles, the “warm house on the mountain” was to do the following: open a humanitarian warehouse to help those in need of Makhachkala; create a local trust phone with an unplanned pregnancy in the Republic of Dagestan; hold a charitable campaign for single, many children and pregnant women in the Republic of Dagestan; hold a conference in the Republic of Dagestan on the problems of crisis motherhood, social orphanage and protection of life before birth with an invitation of nonresident organizations; open a crisis apartment for single mothers with children and pregnant women who fell in a difficult life situation; To illuminate the activities of the project in the media of the Republic of Dagestan.

One of the main ideas promoted by the “Warm House on the Mountain” project was the fight against abortion “on a sexual basis” .

The Guardian Angel also submitted other applications for the presidential grant that were rejected. One of them was supposed to affect the “warm house on the mountain” - on its basis it was supposed to open a workshop of folk design for mothers in a difficult life situation, which the center asked for 5,163,800.00 rubles. As part of the project of women in the Voronezh region and Dagestan, they should have been taught by sewing. A few months later, the center submitted another grant application for a women's rehabilitation school in Dagestan for 2,466,580.00 rubles. The application was rejected, and its text largely duplicated the previous application.

In September 2018, the “Guardian Angel” won a new grant on his Dagestan project-this time it was called “Underground Mom”. The amount was more impressive than the year before - 2,645,380.00 rubles received to work the “warm house on the mountain”. With this money, the project was supposed to implement a lot of initiatives: the direction of mentoring for 20 women “older sister” who fell into a crisis apartment for mothers with children who are not accepted by relatives; Home nursery from birth for 40 children of these women; the visiting school of future mothers for 300 pregnant women from distant areas of Dagestan; train 260 volunteers in different directions; hold the Interregional Forum for 150 participants; And also create a fundraising service and attract 100 sponsors.

“As a result of the project in the Republic of Dagestan, a fundamentally new model for the development of civil society is formed in this region. Thanks to the Public School of Prevention of Refusal of motherhood for reasons of public rejection in Dagestan, women who have a difficult situation related to the birth and upbringing of a child will be able to receive help in temporary living, socio-psychological rehabilitation, will be able to receive legal support. Each woman will have her own personal trained volunteer mentor who will help a woman out of her difficult situation, establishing positive social contacts. In situations of refusal of relatives, mothers will be able to use the services of home nannies in order to be able to go to work and start an independent life, ”the application said.

"A fundamentally new model of society"

In January, the “New Model of Society” looked as follows: in a crisis apartment, where three scared women and eight of their children sat outside the door with a broken castle, the police and inspector for minors. They were brought there by Evgeny Velichkin and Farid Bakhshiev. With their help, they wanted to evict stubborn women who refused to participate in the filming of the plot for Swedish television. It was necessary to show your face in front of the camera - and this is unsafe for those who fled from the persecution.

On the other side of the barricades were the women themselves and their small support group. They tried to explain to the philanthropists that the mission of the “warm house on the mountain” was to help women hide from trouble, they have no right to expel them, and even more so it is impossible to threaten them with a juvenile commission.

The battle was long, but the women managed to defend - at least temporarily. Now they are looking for new housing, protection and a way of some kind of earnings. While they lived in Shelter, they could not get a job: it was necessary to follow the children. The leadership of the “warm house” offered them dubious assistance - for example, in the form of milk, which was issued for participation in events. “Those who will not come to the training tomorrow will not receive milk,” Evgenia Velichkin wrote wards.

Neither dairy products, nor any other food products for the wards were provided for by budgets initially-they were provided by friendly companies, for example, the Kuban company.

Projects that were not

It is difficult to evaluate the activities of the “warm house on the mountain” in 2018, since the women who came to them at that time have long left the walls of the shelter (the conditions for staying there are up to three months, in extreme cases, the term can be extended to six months). But it is quite possible to evaluate what the center was doing in the framework of the embodiment of its underground mothers in 2019.

None of the women who currently live in the crisis apartment of the “warm house” received help from a personal mentor-volunteer. Also, the services of “home nannies” were not provided to anyone - as the women themselves told, even when they were involved in the work on the repair of the apartment, which the crisis center rented earlier, one of them, Asya, looked after all the children. The women looked after two children Evgenia Velichkina - they were often brought here and left for a period from 9 to 18 hours.

The training of volunteers, judging by the leaders of the “warm house on the mountain” themselves, did not end with success either: in a conversation with journalist Svetlana Anokhina, they themselves admitted that no one wants to do something for free in Dagestan. “In practice, very few people come to us ... Well, we are looking at at least someone just to put someone,” admitted Bakhshieva and Velichkin.

As for legal assistance to women, then everything seems to have gone wrong here: not only wards did not receive legal support, but, apparently, the heads of the organization themselves. This became obvious when in January several attempts to quickly evict women with children from a crisis apartment occurred: Velichkin and Bakhshiev claimed that they had every right to do it, that they "consulted with lawyers." However, an PDN employee explained to them that they could not put out women with young children outside the door (recording the conversation between Velichkina and Bakhshieva with an PDN employee and the wards are at the disposal of “MBH Media”).

In addition to the presidential grant, the “warm house on the mountain” received another small grant for a sewing workshop for 367,810.00 rubles. This project should be implemented from November 2019 to November 2020. Already in January, a video of the premises, which is being prepared for the Silkopraita Workshop, appeared on the Instagram of the “warm house” .

One of the wards of the “warm house” Hadizh said that she and other women were offered to clean up a certain workshop in which there should be a sewing workshop. “Type is not free, some man will pay for work. Then I learn from the girls that this is their workshop and they want to put sewing cars there. And they told me completely different. They said how - that the workshop has a master, and that he would pay me for cleaning. Farida said so. As a result, it turned out that it was their workshop, they prepared it for themselves. They wanted to throw me again. I refused, ”said Hadizh.

Evgenia Velichkina says that the “warm house on the mountain” now does not have money to continue to support Shelter. In a conversation with the chief editor of the Daptar portal Svetlana Anokhina Velichkina, she confirmed that they received a new grant, but the tranche has not yet arrived.

Indeed, recently, a “warm house on the mountain” received a grant from the Fund for supporting humanitarian and educational initiatives in the framework of the Orthodox Initiative contest. He will receive his social service “Sisters” - the brainchild of the “warm house”. It has been allocated for completely different initiatives - this is assistance to the Orthodox population of Dagestan. The grant amount is also unknown, but under the terms of the competition, it cannot exceed 600 thousand rubles. Also in the competition there is a special nomination “Principles for pregnant women” - according to it, the winner can receive up to 1,000,000 rubles.

From the description of the project on the website of the competition: “During our activities, former Christians who accepted Islam for various reasons: when they entered into marriage with the Muslim, when receiving assistance from Islamic organizations and mosque, turned to the center. We often face cases of coercion to accept Islam. Often, these people were not provided in time for spiritual, humanitarian, psychological and legal assistance, as well as assistance with housing and work. To do this, we plan to create the first in Dagestan of the Social Support of the Christian population, which will provide spiritual, socio-psychological, humanitarian, legal assistance, as well as temporary residence for the Christians in a difficult situation. ”

The description of the project indicates a certain temporary residence, but only for Christians. Women who until the last moment lived in the apartment of a “warm house on the mountain” are not Christians.

From the dialogue of Farida Bakhshieva and Evgenia Velichkina with reporters in January:

Bakhshieva: An apartment rental agreement is drawn up in my name. I will terminate it, take out my furniture, I have the right to expel everyone from here. Lawyers confirmed that everything is legitimate. We eliminate the shelter for an indefinite period. We will put everything in order, and we will populate women here.

Velichkina: But not these.

Ilya Pilyugin, head of the Angel Keeper, said “MBH Media” that although the “warm house on the mountain” began with a grant received precisely by the organization under his leadership, now their projects are only cooperating, “this is a separate organization”. As for the training of volunteers, this was “they had from the project from presidential grants,” Pilyugin confirms. The training of volunteers was combined with the interregional forum. “Our psychologists came (in Makhachkala), I also came, took events. It was a forum, well, during the forum, training. It was done at the same time, in parallel. I do not know the figure how much I managed to train, ”says Pilyugin.

He cannot cite specific results of the work, but Ilya Pilyugin claims that the “warm house on the mountain” did not reorient his activities, despite the won Orthodox grant. Evgenia Velichkina, the head of the “warm house”, could not be clarified by the head of the “warm house”: at first she referred to employment, and then did not answer the call.

In addition to grants for 2019, the “warm house on the mountain” receives private donations that are difficult to calculate (data on them have not yet been made public) - calls to transfer money, bring clothes and food for women regularly appeared on their social networks. In addition to charitable work, Evgenia Velichkin and Farid Bakhshiev at the end of the year registered their business in Makhachkala, related to restaurants and food delivery services-LLC “Chef-Group”. Girls belong to it 25 percent, the remaining 50 belong to a citizen of Azerbaijan Shamil Mammadov.

Money in any way

Responsibility for unfulfilled grant obligations is small - in the Russian practice of organizations that could not fully and fully fulfill the goals, simply do not receive money in the future. But our colleagues from Dagestan found that the “warm house on the mountain” not only did not fulfill some obligations, but also engaged in fraud to attract attention to the work of his center, and sometimes to attract funds.

The most loud story was the situation with a certain Amina, which the husband forced to have an abortion because of the gender of the child (the man supposedly wanted a boy). It turned out that the role of the girl was played by the actress, found by employees of the “warm house on the mountain” at the university acting faculty, for a modest three thousand rubles. A fake was also a video on which her allegedly angry husband comes for her wife in a crisis apartment. Read more about this in the material of the Daptar portal.

Тексты о работе «Теплого дома на горе» писали четыре журналистки, которые освещали работу организации ранее, знакомы с их руководителями и следили за их деятельностью, а также общались с подзащитными центров. Они уже обратились в Фонд президентских грантов и к руководству конкурса «Православная инициатива» с просьбой изучить ситуацию, сложившуюся вокруг подопечных «Теплого дома на горе».