Moscow, December 1, 2014
This was announced by confessor of the “Miloserdie” (“Mercy”) Orthodox aid service Bishop Panteleimon of Orekhovo-Zuyevo at a briefing on December 1.
25 handicapped children will live at the orphanage, for whom the “Miloserdie” service staff members – hospital nurses, teachers, speech pathologists – will take pains in order to create adequate conditions, as in a family. All the 25 children will be transferred to the new children’s home from the department for seriously sick children of the Moscow Orphanage for the Handicapped no. 15, where nurses and volunteers from the “Miloserdie” service took care of them over the past years. Owing to this training many children began to eat, sit down, walk, smile, communicate with the nurses and the staff without assistance.
“We saw that the children could develop further, but they need other conditions. This an idea has started up: to found a new home for such children,” said Svetlana Emilyanova, coordinator of medical nurses and volunteers of the “Miloserdie” service at the Moscow Orphanage for the Handicapped no. 15 and the new project’s leader.
The new children’s home will devote special attention to the children’s socialization and their integration into society. The home’s staff members will regularly take children to rehabilitation centers for training, to swimming pools, to zoos with disabled access, special museums for visitors with disabilities, and sensory theatre performances. It is planned that from September 2015 all the children will start attending a correctional school (most of these children have not attended a school before). The orphanage will make efforts to get the children adopted by families, but is willing to take care of each orphan once he or she comes of age.
The orphanage for the handicapped will be located in the building of another “Miloserdie” service’s project – the St. Sophia children’s home that became vacant because some of the orphanage wards had been adopted by families, while others had grown up and become ready for independent life. The project of the orphanage for handicapped children is supported by the city of Moscow’s Department of Social Protection and will open in February 2015.
The “Miloserdie” Orthodox aid service unites more than 20 social projects and assists orphaned children, the homeless, pregnant women, mothers with children in crisis situations, the elderly, the incurably sick, and the handicapped.
67% of “Miloserdie’s” projects are supported by private donations.
