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Post-Orphanage
Education Center, Moscow
Many of you will know Andrew and
Georgia Williams who have visited us
regularly over the last few years. You
might be interested to know that during
the last few years, they have also been
very busy with a charity called ROOF
which operates in Russia. They are
currently seeking to raise awareness and
support for the Post Orphanage Education
Centre in Moscow.
Every year in Moscow more than young adults are ‘emancipated’ from
orphanages. Many of these young
adults have received 9 years of
education that equates only to 5 years
in the mainstream Russian educational
system. Most are fully capable of
completing a high-school education, and
many are capable of going on to
institutes and universities. But no
one gives these orphans the
opportunities taken for granted by their
peers of equal intelligence who are
brought up at home. Lack of
practical life experience and difficulty
finding jobs due to prejudice, as well
as their own insecurities, further
complicate the situation.
ROOF was established in 1997 by Georgia
Williams, who is now Managing Trustee of
the organization. Williams visited
Moscow orphanages and asked directors,
“What is the
most important problem a new charity for
orphans should address? Where is your
greatest unmet need?”
Williams got the same answer everywhere:
“Education and psychological
maturity. Our graduates exhibit a
critically low level of effective
education, regardless of the number of
grades formally completed. They are
completely unprepared to find and
maintain employment”.
Thus, for the 1998–99 school year,
Williams hired seventeen teachers who
worked evenings with two hundred
children in four Moscow orphanages.
Results were remarkable and immediate;
with tutorial help, none of the children
in the group fell further behind in
school that year.
Georgia writes: “At ROOF, the method
and medium by which we seek to
achieve all our goals is healthy
personal relationship and our motto
is: “Personal Growth, Together”.
Over ten years we have grown into a team
of teachers who are also mentors and who
view their work as a calling. They are
college professors, published authors
and award winning teachers who care as
much about communicating “heart”
knowledge as “head” knowledge to their
students; these wonderful people are the
backbone of all our programs, because
their attitude of faith, hope, optimism
and genuine concern for other people and
the world around them is contagious. We
do not seek to create the perfect system
for moulding our students into societal
acceptability. Instead, through the
relationships that fortify the ROOF
community (teacher-student,
teacher-teacher, peer-peer,
mentor-mentee relationships) we aim to
foster personal growth for the student
at the same time as we ourselves grow
personally, recalling the words of St.
James, that “Pure and undefiled religion
is this: to visit orphans and widows in
their distress…” The emblem of
our charity is a roof. This is not
coincidental; in addition to “ROOF”
being the acronym for our organization,
the roof symbolizes the comfort, warmth
and family atmosphere that we strive for
in our community.
One student's education at our
Post-Orphanage Education Centre costs
$2400 per year ($200 per month). It's
not cheap anymore in Moscow, I fear. But
our students' needs are as acute as
ever. For each student sponsored we of
course would provide a write-up about
the student and his/her goals, and
progress reports as the year progresses.
.. In terms of the Orthodox element in
what we do, we are very low-key. 90% of
our teachers are practicing Orthodox, so
rather than putting a religious element
in the program itself, we let the
personal relationships do the work. We
figure that is a more Orthodox approach
to missions, anyway”.
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If you have any items for
the newsletter, please
e-mail Simon Harvey at
simon.harvey@stoke.gov.uk
or else leave a copy of your
submission with Father
Samuel or with Simon at
church. Ideally, submissions
should be made by the 15th
of the month to get into the
following month’s edition.
Exceptions may be made in
emergencies. |
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