There are now 9 orphanages in the Moscow region, including one private children’s home. Among them, we support the Center for the Support of Family Education in Moscow region ”Doverie” – the only orphanage in the region for children with disabilities. It is in the old village of Almazovo, Shchelkovo district. We recently met with its director Svetlana Nikolaevna Kruchinina.
Svetlana Nikolaevna said that now children with disabilities are also accepted into ordinary orphanages, where the child can study according to an adapted program at the nearest correctional school. If there is no such school, home education is organized for a child with mental disabilities. But in this case, it turns out that the child is “locked” in the orphanage and his disorders can only worsen until the onset of puberty, when everything becomes even more complicated. In “Doverie” orphanage defectologists conduct lessons every day according to special programs of the auxiliary school, cultural events are held, the regime is observed, and good nutrition is provided. Children are socialized, introduced to work – children are creating something or taking care of the garden. And most importantly, comfortable conditions have been created for living in family groups.
We asked Svetlana Nikolaevna to tell more about cooperation with our foundation and “Doverie” Children’s Home.
Friendship story
– We have been cooperating with the “Diema’s Dream” Foundation for over 10 years. In 2009, the Fund donated tickets for the New Year’s performance at the Circus on Vernadsky Avenue for our pupils. In 2010 we did not yet have family-style rooms like now where children can cook, iron, and get other household skills. We had bedrooms where there were several beds with bedside tables next to each other. And then with assistance of the Fund we decided to equip a household services office in the warehouse. We made good repairs: changed the floor, lighting, installed water supply and sewerage, refurbished it all and installed kitchen furniture and household appliances. The partner of the fund, a well-known company, helped us with this then. After the company got acquainted with our orphanage within the framework of this project, it then carried out a complete internal renovation of the school premises – it invested considerable funds. Before that the walls were painted with oil paint. I remember that hot summer of 2010 very well.
Since then, the Foundation has been supporting us. For example, last New Year we had a good new experience when Renault Russia joined. We asked the company to help us with good clothes for children. As you know it can be difficult with clothes sometimes since according to Federal Law 44 we carry out purchases at minimal prices. And, unfortunately, the dumping prices of potential suppliers lead to the fact that the clothes purchased from them are not worn for long. And we want the children to be modern and stylishly dressed. And Renault Russia helped us with this – we chose clothes ourselves directly from the web site, and the company’s employees bought everything that we picked up for each child with their own money.
In addition to good clothes for children from employees, we received two more bunk beds, which were purchased at the expense of the company. And also we received a bedspread for every bed for all the children. Moreover, the bedspreads were not the same for everyone, but of its own style in each bedroom.
Anyway, we have been working successfully with the foundation for a long time now and we would really like our friendship to continue. Even though there are many orphanages in other regions under your care.
And recently we got an idea of one ambitious project. It is supported by both: our ministry and the Shchelkovo administration. I informed Elena Volodina about it – and she warmly supported our idea. We have an old coal-fired boiler house, we are still using it. But a new gas one has already been built. The works have been finished, commissioning has been completed, and only approvals remain. We expect the new boiler house to start up in early 2021. And out of the old coal boiler house we would like to make a sports facility. It so happened that we have a lot of playgrounds outside: playgrounds, sports courts, a site for children. And there is no gym. And the boiler house already has utilities and water. Of course, it should be re-equipped according to standards and regulations. We understand that this is a large long-term project and considerable funds will be needed for it, and we will have to prepare the project plan. Therefore, we are glad that Elena Anatolyevna supported our idea. Elena says that some companies have great interest in such long-term projects because upon completion they see the result of their support. And we would really like to start it. We want there to be a gym where we could conduct physical education lessons, exercise therapy competitions, contests, relay races. Now we are doing all this in the only recreational hall of the school. We could also hold all our school-wide events there, since we do not have an assembly hall either. Now there are many modern solutions on how to transform the space for different purposes – sports or cultural events. There are modular reclining seats that can be hung on the walls. If there is a sport event taking place – the seats can be closed, an if there is some other kind of event, the spectators can seat along the wall. All communications will have to be reconstructed. Children from another orphanage might come to us for the competition – we need good ventilation, showers so that after the game the children can wash themselves, toilets.
About the institution.
– The design capacity of our institution is 32 children. We have children from all over the Moscow region. Now we have 27 children, and on November 1 there were 30. The number of pupils is constantly changing, because new children come in or our children go into families, under guardianship. There are only 2 girls among our children, the rest are boys. More than half of children are aged 16 to 18. We have only 1 child in 1st grade. The main diagnosis of our children is mental (intellectual) retardation. It is mostly in a light form but there are also children with a moderate disability. There are also children diagnosed with schizophrenia, ASD (autism). Half of the children have several disorders of mental and intellectual development combined – for example, mental retardation, schizophrenia, episyndrome and many other somatic diseases.
There are 65 employees at the institution. These are educators, teachers (they are also defectologists), psychologists, social educators, medical and service personnel. We are tied to the polyclinic in Shchelkovo and we are undergoing medical check-ups, the necessary examinations. Our children are very active – they love sports, creativity. You probably saw how many cups, letters, and diplomas we have here at school. This is the first year we have been participating in online contests, and before that we took children to both international contests and all-Russian ones! We have speakers, dancers, artists, and musicians. We constantly went on excursions to Moscow, around the region, in Shchelkovo – to zoos, museums, and visited sights. And every month volunteers from the “Good Planet”, “Volunteers to Help Orphans”, “Generation Auchan”, and others came to us with master classes. But since spring we have not accepted volunteers. And the recent Eco-lesson, which was held with all precautions with the assistance of the Foundation for our children by Renault Russia employees was the first cultural and educational event in our orphanage after a long break.
You can join help to orphanages in the Projects section.