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8 new street kids in Pilgrim within 1 day

02 March

For the last several months there’s a notice in the center of children’s rehabilitation “Republic “ Pilgrim”. In view of the financial crisis in the country the state structures not only stopped making obstacles to living in the center for the children from unsafe families but provide with newcomers and that is why the center is regularly filled with the fresh street kids.

Within one day 5-8 kids can get to the center. Some of them wander on streets, some are brought by their own alcoholic parents or relatives who can’t provide them elementary conditions of life. For instance, 12-year-old Sasha Zenich got to the center about 3 months ago. He used to live on streets, and the service of search of children from the town Makeevka directed him to “ Republic “ Pilgrim”. His mother is in a deep alcoholic addiction, his father is in prison, his grandma sells things at the market place.

Sasha: «At first I felt confused, I was embarrassed because I knew nobody here. But day by day It got better and better and I found many friends, my friend and classmate from Makeevka lives and studies here in the center. I like that we have a lot of different events, we study and then we have a leisure time. We play various games and computer. We go to the churc, to the cinema and play football at the stadium. My grandmother took my three sisters here because at home it is hard to live, mother drinks and curses. We don’t want to live there”.

The twin -sister Olya tells that when Sasha got to “Pilgrim”, they called his grandmother up and informed her where Sasha stayed and where the other kids can be taken. She offered to her grandchildren to come to Sasha and if they like they could stay there to study.

Olya: “Our grandmother doesn’t want us to see drunken faces every day, out grandfather is seriously sick, he has got the third stimulator in his heart already and here we can be altogether ( all 4 children!) unlike in other orphanages – all separately”.

The oldest sister Alina is 14, her adaptation here passes rather problematically. She actively fights against smoking and can’t get accustomed to the collective life yet. But a 9-year-old Ann Zenich started studying in the 3rd grade here, she showed her talents at once – the girl is fond of drawing.
In that very evening the transport police called to “Pilgrim”. Pastor Gennady drove to the railway station himself to pick up the little vagabonds.
Several days before the minors service delivered 16-year-old Tanya Andreeva to “Pilgrim”. The girl was drunken. The officials told that she fell out of the window being completely drunken. Fortunately, she didn’t get any traumas.

Almost every day the telephone rings: “ Come, pick up the drunken adolescent, the street kids wander on streets and snuff the glue”. Here are some examples.

Just recently the local residents called the “Pilgrim” up, when they saw 3 street kids who were snuffing the glue and begging by the big store in the city center. The workers of the “Pilgrim” center made an urgent raid, and took a “party” of children. And then a church member called who saw on the street a street boy. He suggested him to come to “ Pilgrim” but the boy resisted: he started yelling, erupting, calling for help. As it turned out that boy had already been to “ Pilgrim” and then the free street life seemed to him more attractive and he ran away but this time he got one more chance. The man who caught him rang the mentors of “ Pilgrim” up and he gave a receiver to the boy for him to get assured that nobody is going to keep him by force. The boy agreed to come to get some food, to get washed, to change cloth, but he stayed in the center and doesn’t want to leave it so far.

This very day the regional police station called “ Pilgrim” up and asked to take from the central market one more street child. The workers of the center could be operative enough to deliver the boy to the center.

According to the forecast of the executive director Tatyana Karpuchina the number of kids in the center can get 100 shortly. Since there’s not enough food in families and worldly establishments, the state is not able to provide the social institutions, but there are Christian organizations which are always ready to put shoulders.

 

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