I would like to become more proactive in my pursuit to help orphans in Russia. Last night I attended a reception at the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC with the Russian Ambassador to the United States and Representative Chris Smith (R- New Jersey). Also in attendance was Princess Alexis Obolensky, a member of a Russian emigre family. My goal is to meet others who are helping Russian orphans in creative ways and learn from their experiences. I met an incredibly brave physician, Dr. Juliette Ingel, who after visiting Russia in the early nineties, came home, sold her lucrative medical practice and moved to Russia to help children abandoned or orphaned at birth. Her organization, MiraMed, provides humanitarian aid to orphanages in the Moscow region. When Dr. Ingel learned of the recruitment of young girls from the orphanages into prostitution rings operating in Eastern Europe, she began a program of education directed at at-risk adolescent girls in orphanages. In 1998, she became aware of the growing and widespread practice of trafficking orphanage girls into sexual slavery overseas, so she developed a proposal to begin an anti-sexual trafficking education campaign for highest risk girls in the rural regions of the Russian Federation. WOW! She is my shero. I also met the founder of Firefly, an international organization working to close orphanages in Russia by helping local governments develop programs that will keep children in their birth families. Getting one child out of an orphanage is easy to imagine, but getting one million out and ending the use of institutions is far more complex. Many countries in the world, including the United States, have moved from institutions to community care, and hopefully Russia will promote foster care and eventually close their over-crowded and under-funded orphanages throughout the country. In Russia, there are up to 300 children of various ages living under the same roof. The result of such circumstances can be horrific. The suicide rates of orphans released at 18 is shocking, and the rate of prostitution is also very disturbing. This year, orphanages receive only 22 rubles per child a day, only eight rubles of which is used to buy food. There are about 25 rubles to the dollar. Surely there is more we can do as caring, concerned human beings. As I heard over and over again last night, all children smile in the same language. Hopefully the Russian Orphanage Project can bring more smiles to the faces of the beautiful children of Russia in 2008.
