Contents

Background Information

Summary

The Need

ROOF’s Experience

Principles

Program Goals

Opportunity for Personal Growth

www.roofnet.org

Since 1997, ROOF has been a pioneer in providing high-quality educational opportunities for children and young adults from Russian orphanages.

Our aim is to help each child or young adult by providing opportunities and encouragement to learn and grow; to take advantage of their own talents and gifts and make the most of them, working to overcome the disadvantages of their past and become more fully themselves.

Background Information

After some significant changes in 2010, ROOF stands at a cross roads. We are choosing a new program direction now which will inspire and inform our future for some time to come. This document lays out what we know. This coming year will involve weighing up these options, looking at the feasibility of all, and ultimately making a choice of program direction which is likely to incorporate some elements from everything seen in this presentation. What types of orphanages we will go further into will be driven by demand, which we will be paying close attention to over the coming year.

Summary

The Need: Without mentors from outside the system, it is extremely common for children who have grown up in institutions to end up on the street, in petty crime and prostitution, etc. Less than 2% go on to higher education.

Our Experience and What We Offer: Thirteen years’ experience of good, sometimes spectacular, results helping children and young people overcome the disadvantages of institutionalization leading to universities and/or jobs.

Principles and Goals: Dealing with the particular needs of each person, we want to be not only teachers but mentors, with the aim that each student will develop the ability and confidence to make their own way in society.

Specific Program Goals: We aim to ensure that projects are in place to ensure help for students at every stage from childhood to independence. We aim to keep projects personal: that is, grass-roots decisions and local responsibility.

Funding Needs / Budget: Our strategic plan requires that we find at least $60,000 more toward the 2011 budget. (Minimum budget $152,000)

The Need: The Plight of Orphans in Russia

MHSD

Ministry of Education Orphanages

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~150,000

~700,000

~110,000

~40,000

Ministry of Education orphanages; children taught in local schools –

» 80% two years behind in school by age 12

Ministry of Education “Type 8” Special Correctional Schools –

» Children receive only a 5th grade education

MHSD (Ministry of Health and Social Development) Orphanages –

» No education

» No housing at 18

» No right to work

Fewer than 2% go on to higher education

Children need apprenticeships or more training / tutoring if they are to be employable

A lifetime in institutions: a slow road to non-being

The Need – MHSD Orphanages (MHSD=Ministry of Health and Social Development)

» Only nominal education

» Diagnosed as ‘unteachable’

» In reality, very varied in abilities – many with behavioral or other issues (e.g. diabetes) rather than mental disability

» Institutionalized for life – at 18, young people are sent to an adult psycho-neurological institution

» Deprived of the opportunity to work or to live independently

» Psychological health deteriorates rather than improving in these institutions

ROOF’s Experience – map of ROOF projects

Pskov

Moscow

98 km

600 km

200 km

50 km

Podolsk

Pereslavl-Zalessky

• Post-Orphanage Education Center StepUp (independent since late 2010)

• Post-Orphanage Education Center BigChange (started by former ROOF employees in 2003)

• Educational Support in Podolsk Orphanage • Educational Support in Peredelkino Orphanage • Educational Support in Sergeev Posad

Orphanage (planned start 2011) • Jewel Girls Art Therapy and Life Skills Program

implemented together with FairFund • Funding for StepUp Post-Orphanage Education

Center • Educational Programs in Moscow Orphanages

Numbers 6, 50, 1843, 62, 69, 15, 26 and in Bykovo Orphanage near Moscow

• ROOF outfitted children’s libraries and sitting rooms in two orphanages

Completed or closed ROOF programs

Current ROOF programs

ROOF “Spin-offs”

• Social Hotel No.1 (now part of Rostok programs)

• Social Hotel No.2, the “Abilitation Center”

• Educational Support in the Belskoye Ustye Orphanage

• “Baranovo House” Volunteer Center supporting Belskoye Ustye Orphanage

• ROOF’s International Summer Camp for the children of Belskoye Ustye Orphanage

• Weekend Foster Program supporting Belskoye Ustye children (now part of Rostok programs)

• Rostok has since gone on to design and implement 2 more group home transitional living programs for children and orphanage leavers from Belskoye Ustye who will never be able to live independently

Porkhov

ROOF’s Experience – Moscow

» helps children in orphanages catch up and keep up at school

» pioneered transitional post-orphanage education from which scores of young people have gone on to jobs, college or university

» numbers among its former students a lawyer, an accountant, a business-school graduate, and a Russian Orthodox priest

ROOF

» ROOF has 13 years’ experience working in the Moscow region

» Regional programs have reached almost 800 children and young adults

» Early experience with 50 teachers working in 12 orphanages helped children catch up in school: in our second year of operation, 18 children completed 2 years of school in 1 year

» Experience in orphanages showed the need for transitional post-orphanage support

» ROOF’s Post-Orphanage Education Centre opened 2000 in central Moscow with more than 100 students by 2002

» 2003: ROOF’s former Director of Education opened a second Education Centre in southern Moscow as a separate charitable organization “Big Change”

» Jewel Girls project helps vulnerable young people avoid trafficking

» 2010: Education Centre becomes a separate charitable organization “Step Up” keeping its corporate and private sponsors, and with grants from ROOF to cover start-up and contribute to operations

ROOF’s Experience – Pskov Region

» ROOF has 11 years’ experience working in the Pskov region

» Projects here are for the benefit of children at and young people from one MHSD orphanage in Belskoye Ustye

» 110 supposedly “unteachable” children at the orphanage are destined for life-long institutionalization

» The Summer Camp began in 2000, bringing international volunteers to this tiny Russian village to educate and entertain the children of the orphanage

» The need for transitional programs to help the children escape the adult institution was apparent: a USAID grant beginning 2001 led to the first “social hotel” and a weekend fostering program for 16 children

» By 2005 the first “social hotel” program had spawned a new local Pskov charity called “Rostok”, which went on to found even more transitional living programs

» ROOF opened a second “social hotel”, called the Abilitation Centre, the same year, and bought a house to function as a year-round voluneteer base in 2006

Current projects:

» Annual summer camp

» Abilitation Centre

» Orphanage educational support

» Baranovo House volunteer base

Principles and Aims

Ancillary goals

» Adopting a “holistic” approach to mentoring: caring for the spiritual, as well as the intellectual, psychological and physical health of the children with whom we work

» Contributing to the development of volunteer culture in the Russian Federation

» Designing programs that treat orphans’ struggle to find their place in society within the larger framework of stimulating growth in local communities

» Working for a practical marriage between the “widow’s mite” culture of philanthropy found deep within traditional Russian culture, and the structured and pragmatic approach to philanthropy that is common in Western Europe and America

» Providing educational support to children who remain in state institutions

» Establishing mentor relationships and integrating orphaned children with the rest of society

» Helping young adults from an orphanage background find and keep employment

» Breaking down societal prejudice against orphans

» Rescuing children from MHSD orphanages from transfer to adult institutions

» Focus on the individual person’s individual needs

» Freedom and choice (e.g. no ROOF classes or clubs have ever been mandatory)

» Strength in community

» Cross-cultural opportunities

ROOF’s main goals

Principles

Program Goals

» Strengthen and rebuild ROOFs educational support programs in orphanages

» Church parish-orphanage partnership

» Enhance ROOF’s summer camp by integrating child-development specialists

» Keep the Baranovo house filled year-round with volunteers

» Assess and set new goals for the Porkhov “Abilitation Center”

» Help Jewel Girls become an independent NGO

» Find new approaches to stimulate local community involvement

Program Goals: Strengthen and Rebuild Orphanage Projects

The need for strong programs for younger children (still living in orphanages):

» Deeper contact with and integration into the lives of mentors – not just periodic “play time” with fun adults – is crucial to institutionalized children

» Starting when children are younger means better, deeper results, increasing a child’s chance of setting realistic life goals and reaching these goals

» ROOF’s initial success with in-orphanage tutoring/mentoring for younger children is what lead to the development of post-orphanage programs – the need for academic support and mentoring for younger children has not gone away!

Our proposed method meets our ancillary goals of building volunteer culture and taking a holistic approach to education:

» With the proper blessing from hierarchs of the ROC, recruit orphanage volunteers from local church parishes, by building relationships with priests who encourage grass-roots philanthropic work

» Strategize about how best to begin to meet some of the orphanage’s needs given particular parish’s resources

» “Read the situation” and step into the gap wherever and whenever possible to enable the strengthening of the bond between people in the local community/local parish and the local orphanage children and administration

» Help initiate club activities, trips and excursions

» Help parishes pair with a “sister parish” abroad to jointly support the orphanage projects – the dynamism of programs goes up exponentially when there is a well-organized cross-cultural component

» Eventually, help mature programs with stable longer-term sponsorship to cut loose from ROOF and continue to exist under local management

Program Goals: Develop Porkhov Region Projects

Child-development specialists

» Orphanage staff tell us that the best time for diagnostic work is during the summer camp when children are socializing and involved in a wide variety of activities that exhibit the children’s skills at their best; specialists could blend in with volunteers and their work

» An opportunity for cross-cultural learning: foreign and Russian specialists would work together

Volunteers at Baranovo

» Keep the Baranovo House (1.5 km from orphanage) filled year-round with volunteers

Develop the Abilitation Center

» Of the five young men, one or more may soon leave, as the project manager has acted successfully on their behalf to obtain housing from the state. Since the Center is already not at full capacity, this leaves our project at a transition stage with opportunities to set new goals for existing residents and aim to bring in new ones

Program Goals: Community Development

Nurturing new projects to the point where they are strong enough to sustain themselves independently has been a characteristic of ROOF’s work; a diverse group of locally-run projects stimulates further development

» Jewel Girls has strong, independent management which has researched independent registration

» The only current barrier to registration is a financial barrier ($4k)

Community involvement in projects:

» Develop local volunteer culture

» Make links with other local community movements and local churches

» Seek local mentors for orphans

Stimulate local economic development to provide opportunities for orphans:

» A community in despair (like some rural regions of Russia) doesn’t provide much for orphanage graduates to integrate into!

» Brainstorm with micro-lending experts in Pskov region to assess the feasibility of a completely new time of project: integrate orphans into projects which are more broadly focused on investment into the local economy