“Hope” shelter: «All our children love their parents for the way they are, without judging them…»Irina and her 8-year-old son Artem came to St.Petersburg from a little town in Siberia seeking a better life. Their dreams were slow to materialize: Irina couldn’t find a job; neither could she find a place to live for both of them. Irina had some money that she had got when she sold her parents’ apartment in her native town. Soon, she ran out of her savings, as the life in St.Petersburg was very expensive. Irina got desperate and left her son with a Buddhist temple, where she did some chores in return for food and shelter. People from the shelter under the auspices of the Russian Charity Foundation “Child Protection” took care of Artem. “We could have placed him in a children’s home”, Tatiana Voronina, Chairperson of the “Child Protection” Foundation, said. “But we have a different approach: we always try to restore the relationship between parents and their children; we try to help them in their difficult situation in order to keep the family intact.” They assisted Irina in finding a job and having appropriate documents issued. Artem lived in the shelter and his mother visited him regularly. She joined other children from the shelter in their trips to the city museums, participated in their tea parties and other activities. “We could see Artem changing with every day. When he was admitted to the shelter, he was aggressive, he felt offended because he thought his mother didn’t need him any more,” Larisa Bochkareva, a psychologist with the shelter, said. “Gradually, his attitude towards his mother started changing. Artem became more open and trusting. Now, Irina and her son have common interests and common wish to preserve their family. Since Irina’s life has yet to be brought back to normal, we decided to find her parents who could look after the boy on a temporary basis. Presently, Artem lives with his grandparents, while Irina lives and works in St.Petersburg, calling her son often by telephone and visiting him when possible.” There are 12 boys aged 8 to 18 accommodated in the shelter. Some of them were abandoned by their parents, though more often they are removed from dysfunctional families by guardianship authorities. The shelter has been operating under the Foundation’s auspices for 9 years now. Various organizations, including UNICEF, provide support for its activities. The centre can not accommodate all the children in need of assistance. However, there are no plans for the centre’s expansion. “The current number of children accommodated at the centre allows to efficiently deal with them on an individual basis. They all feel at home here,” Larisa said. Indeed, the shelter provides a cozy and family-like environment for its residents: the children live like a big friendly family where their needs, wishes and interests are taken into account. Each of them has specific duties – they go shopping; they do their laundry and clean the living premises; they participate in making up a menu. Older children help younger children and take care of them. They even bring younger children to a medical centre. “When we started working, we dealt mainly with street children,” Larisa Bochkareva said. “Today, there are practically no street children as such, but the number of neglected children has gone up. At first sight, their families seem to be trouble-free. Not all families have parents with alcohol problems. It’s just that they do not care about their children; they are either too busy with their own lives or they are infantile.” According to the Foundation’s staff, dealing with parents turned out to be more difficult than dealing with their children. Often, they simply do not want to visit their children seeing them as a burden. “Our boys love their parents for the way they are and very much want to return to their families expecting that that their life could go back to normal,” Tatiana Voronina said. “We’ve been trying to reach parents through their children.” Sasha has been staying at the shelter for two years now. Presently, he is 15. The shelter’s workers started to gradually engage his parents in their son’s life inviting them for joint outings to museums, concerts and to the countryside. Getting involved in his son’s life has helped Sasha’s step-father, whom Sasha calls “my daddy”, overcome his own weaknesses and address his alcohol addiction problem. In order not to be a disgrace to his son, he started wearing clean clothes and looking decent. Sasha’s mother got a job and started seeing his son at the shelter. «We arrange family gatherings at the shelter, where parents and their children try to learn more about each other and how to spend time together,” Larisa Bochkareva said. “They make pies together, plant trees and make handicrafts. It’s not only the children, but their parents as well who are opening themselves up to a new world… In fact, some of them have never been either to the theatre or a museum before.» Before a child goes back to his/her family, the Foundation’s staff check the family environment more than once, assist parents with apartment repairs and spring-cleaning. During their stay at the shelter, the boys develop self-confidence and learn not only how to survive in this world, but how to improve it and make it a better place for all of us to live in. Among the shelter’s “graduates”, there are many young people who have received education and started their own business.
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