News from St Gregory's Foundation

SGF celebrates Life Skills course for orphans

Next time you see a child being dragged reluctantly round a supermarket, especially if it is your own, think about how much they are learning in spite of themselves.  They see what food, cleaning products it takes to keep a family, they find out where you can buy them, they watch how adults interact with each other at the checkout.  Children in institutional care in Russia don't have these natural learning opportunities within a family.  Indeed traditionally, they rarely leave the orphanage except on tightly managed school trips.  With this little experience of how to manage life, perhaps it is not suprising that 40% of orphanage leavers end up homeless.

St Gregory's Foundation's Life Skills course brings together teaching materials on 13 topics from personal hygiene and cooking to how to find and keep somewhere to live.  The course gets kids out of the classroom, learning these essential skills by doing.

On 12th November we celebrated the publication of the course's second edition with our Royal patron, HRH Prince Michael of Kent. Also present were Dr Ekaterina Genieva of the Russian State Library for Foreign Literature and the Earl and Countess of Chester, whose generous support made the second printing possible.

Why celebrate the second edition? Well, we are delighted that this edition will be available right across Russia.  Sets have been ordered by institutions in Archangel in the north to Kyzyl close to the Mongolian border.  This represents thousands of children who will be better equipped to face life after the ophanage.

Members visit SGF work in Tbilisi, St Petersburg and Georgia

September 2009 saw two separate trips organised by St Gregory's Foundation members one to Georgia, including a visit to the Mkurnali charity we support, and one to St Petersburg and Karelia to visit a range of our work.

As a small charity we are lucky to be able to keep our supporters in close touch with our work, and to let a growing number see at first hand how their donations are used.

Both groups were met with great hospitality and were impressed by the immense commitment of our colleagues on the ground.  Linda Rhead writes about Mkurnali:

"Tremendous work is clearly being done taking these young teenagers off the street and away from a life of crime and poverty.  They are given skills and a means to make a living in some interesting ways, for example, in computer repair work, in a garden centre and making enamel jewellery."

Generous donations from the visitors have immediately been put to work making repairs to the new premises the charity has recently moved to. The donation has also allowed them to buy beds for the growing number of street children that stay over on site.