'Russia - into the future' launches 'Stars for Children' project

The 'Russia - into the future' charitable club together with the Council for Youth Affairs under Patriarch announced the launch of the 'Stars for Children' program and other initiatives. The chairman of the Council for Youth Affairs under Patriarch, Inal Ardzinba, said that the 'Russia into the future' club was established quite recently on the initiative of the Council under the patriarch. Our first initiative is to support the orphanage in Sergiev Posad. The main goal we set in this framework of this charitable program is building a special adaptation center for orphanage graduates."

The director of the Sergiev Posad residential care facility deaf-blind children and youth with disabilities, Galina Epifanova, said that the facility has been operational for 55 years: "We are located not far from the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. 200 children live and study in our residential care facility. These are children with different problems: totally deaf-blind, weak-sighted and deaf, hard-of-hearing and blind, blind with speech underdevelopment and other children with multiple severe disabilities.They live in four departments: the preschool department; the department for children who receive the general education, a department for children who have intellectual disorders in addition to hearing disorder and vision disorder, as well as a social labor department to prepare them for professions."

According to Galina Epifanova, children participate in creative events, festivals and concerts with famous artists: "A lot of efforts are invested in these children by our teachers. The center that we want built for our graduates will provide an opportunity for further rehabilitation and preparation of our pupils to independent life. Spiritual education is one of the important tasks we do in our institution. We have a temple, specially built for our students. Children go to church on Sundays and public holidays, attend church services, assist the priest at the altar, sing in church choir."

As part of the Stars for Children program, famous Russian artists will hold charity events aimed at supporting children from social institutions. Calling to help children, People’s Artist of Russia Nikolai Baskov said: "One can be rich or poor, but the main thing is to have a soul. It doesn’t matter how much you earn. But you can write, read, have fun, go places, forgetting that that a huge number of people cannot do it. Feasible help does not depend on how much money you donated. Even if you donate five rubles, first of all, it is a spiritual message. Everything we do from a pure heart comes back to us. Therefore, do not forget do good deeds... Somehow a priest told me: "The goal in life of every human is to become a better person, better at everything: in his actions, in relation to the family, friends, no matter what we want, what we aspire to."

"I hope our project will be heard and we will find new friends. I’m sure that not only philanthropists will help us, but we will be supported by the government as well," Baskov said.