These Girls Need Help

Meeting some of the girls outside the orphanage, late June 2013.

As most of you know, I continue to stay in touch with a number of the girls who aged out of orphanage #5. Some of them have sponsors, and this help has kept a few of them from both hunger and homelessness. It is hard for some Americans to believe that $50 a month could literally save a life, but it can. And it has. And since this money goes directly from you to them, there is no waste. There is no organization taking a percentage for advertising or salaries or in-country bribes. I give you the full name of one of the girls I  know to be responsible and trustworthy enough to be a good steward of the money. You commit to sending them $50 per month for 12 months. You send the money to them via western union, and the girls report to you monthly on how they are doing via email or Russian FB (your choice.)  In some instances, you are welcome to send a bit more if you wish, but it truly depends on the situation. For some girls, more than $50 a month would be too much to handle. However, there are other girls who are trying to stay in school and a bit more would keep them there. I cannot post their full names here, but I'll give you their full name if you are matched with one of them.

THE GIRLS:

Ksusha on left, Nastya on right.

First is Nastya K. Nastya currently has a sponsor, but she is in need of additional support as she is trying to secure safe housing so she can remove her younger brother from the orphanage. Now that Nastya is 18, she has a legal right to take in her brother, but she must prove she has safe housing first. She wrote to me last night and said she has found a small apartment in Prokopyevsk that is about 4 miles from the orphanage. To rent it, she must pay a year's rent in advance. The rent on the apartment is only $100 per month, but for her that is a fortune. If I can find a sponsor, or several sponsors, who can provide the funds for her to rent, her little brother will be able to join her and have a much better quality of life. Her brother is friends with my Daniel, and is 14 years old. He's a GREAT kid, and is desperate to live with his sister. 

Ksusha, who appears above with Nastya, is the next one I hope to find a sponsor for. Ksusha has had a very hard life and is finally starting to see that life can bet better than it was in the orphanage. I have been supporting her on and off for the past year, as has an online friend of mine. I now need to find a permanent sponsor for the next twelve months. Ksusha is attending school, but is forced to live in pretty horrible conditions. She has been known to starve herself, sometimes days at a time, just so she could afford school supplies and bus fare to school. She finds it hard to accept help, but is finally more amenable to it. When I visited in June you might remember it took me hours to convince her to buy a few things for herself when I took the girls shopping. Ksusha wants to succeed, but has had so many strikes against her, she is very cautious. She dreams of being a teacher. I want to see this dream come true for her. When she was at school #66 near the orphanage, she was the top student. I'd like to find either one sponsor to send $100 a month, or two sponsors to send $50 each. This will afford Ksusha not only money for food, but also for school supplies, bus fare, etc. 

Finally, the last girl I'll write about today is Angelina.

The photo is from two years ago. When I saw Angelina in June, she had lost significant weight. she had very pale skin and dark circles under her eyes ( see the top photo in this post. That is Angelina, crying.). She seemed very depressed, too. Like Ksusha and Nastya, Angelina is a very bright girl and was one of the favorites at the orphanage. She loves fashion and art, but is currently attending a trade school because she couldn't afford to go anywhere else. The government is paying for her trade school tuition. Angelina stays at the orphanage every weekend because her current living quarters provided by the school are not safe. She is only 17 years old. I would like to find a sponsor to send $50 a month to her to help cover the cost of food and necessities.

If you are interested in helping any of these girls, please leave a comment with your email or a way to contact you. Alternatively, if you would like to help but cannot commit to $50 a month, feel free to make a smaller one-time donation via the paypal like on the top righthand corner of my blog and I will use it to send funds to the girls this month, while I still try to secure a longterm sponsor.

I'll write about the other girls tomorrow and Tuesday.

Thank you!