NADEZHDA HOUSE PROJECT

Dear friends,

I am Anna G. Miliotti, an Italian adoptive mother of two children from Russia, and an adoption reform activist in my country.

I have a very special project I want to share with you. I am working to establish Nadezhda House in Vladimir, Russia, to provide a transitional home where mothers and children can stay together, protected, until they find a job or a permanent house. Our goal is to help young mothers without resources, and to help children remain together with the women who gave them birth. We do not want the children to live and grow up alone, in an orphanage, having no hope for the future.

In post communist Russia, there is still little hope for many people. Women and children, being the weakest part of society, carry the weight of the collapsed social system. 20.30 year olds have a high death rate, and the situation is frightening and desperate, as in a war. There are 4 million young people living in the streets, a quarter of which live in Moscow. Rebuilding is taking place, but it is slow.

The family structure has deteriorated. It is difficult for men to find a jib, and those already employed risk losing it. So family life conditions become precarious and hard. Alcoholism and violence are rampant. Mothers with children are left alone and have no other resources than to live in the streets. In Vladimir many women appeal to the chief doctor of the Vladimir City orphanage for help. The doctor will often take the child into her care, but there are no facilities to provide for the mother. The mother is forced, at that point, to break the bond with her own child in order to save its life. She leaves heartbroken, full of guilt and shame. She is caught in a downward cycle of self-destruction. She cannot return to take her child, whom she loves. The Court declares her unfit and takes her parental rights. She is either imprisoned for some crime, or she might die in the street in the night as a result of alcohol related factors, accidents or even murder.

That was the story of Nadezhda, my adoptive daughter Dasha's mother. She died at thirty-one, in July 1993, in a hospital in Stepantsevo, a small village in the Vladimir region. We have now learned that Nadezhda was dying just as we went to pick up Dasha in an orphanage only 40 km away. I discovered this on a trip back to Russia last September, researching Dasha's origins. It was her specific wish that we go, and we found many people who knew and remembered her well, and her mother too.

The "Nadezhda" Project will be managed in Russia by Jeanne Beckner, a citizen of United States, who has lived and worked in Vladimir, Russia, since early 1993, when she founded there a ministry of Baptist church. She runs in Vladimir the ONLUS Utecheneye (a Russian not-for-profit organization established under the umbrella of International Technical assistance Group, I.T.A.G., which sends developing countries professional workers in the areas of community development, medical and health care projects, entrepreneurship, work with poor, and the care and nurturing of children).
In Italy the project is managed by N.A.D.I.A. ONLUS, an adoption agency (www.adozioneminori.it) authorized by Italian central authority to work in Russia, as a art of their compliance with Italy's new Hague Convention regulations. The project is also supported by Soroptimist International Clubs of Prato and Livorno. In Russia is supported by Soroptimist International Club of Moscow and Vladimir. On April, we had a jazz concert to raise seed money for Nadezhda House.

The house will be constructed by Russian workers and managed by local volunteers, so that they can experience first-hand now solidarity can make a difference.

"Nadezhda" is the Russian word for hope, and it is our missions to bring hope for mothers and their children in Vladimir and to become a model for other cities and countries. Please join us making Nadezhda House.

UNICEF SUPPORTS INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION OVER INSTITUTIONALIZATION
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) released a position statement on intercountry adoption, stating that support should be provided to families who need help caring for their children and "alternative means of caring for a child should only be considered when, despite this assistance, a child's family is unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for him or her." In it's statement this month, UNICEF acknowledged that "an appropriate alternative family environment should be sought in preference to institutional care." It said institutional care should be temporary and a "last resort." UNICEF also recognized that intercountry adoption "may indeed be the best solution" when adoption within the country itself is not possible. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child had been construed by some to support institutional care over intercountry adoption. To read the statement, go to: http://www.unicef.org/media/media_15011.html. (from: THE EVAN B. DONALDSON ADOPTION INSTITUTE JANUARY 2004 E-NEWSLETTER)

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Thank for your help.
With love

Dasha and her adoptive mother, Anna Genni Miliotti