Orphans need help. This is clear.
And until we began to actively work with orphanages, we believed that this thesis is so simple and clear-unambiguous that there is nothing special to discuss it, you need to take it and help.
Upon closer acquaintance with the problems of orphanages, it turned out that help can be useful and harmful. Many good intentions are broken about our eternal “I wanted the best, but it turned out:”.
Harmful help
The most familiar and understandable ways to help orphans, children from orphanages and boarding schools are, first of all, gifts (from simple toys and worn, but still whole things to expensive TVs), payment for entertainment and excursions, and many others. But have you ever thought about the long-term consequences of such gifts?
Suppose sponsors come to the orphanage and give the children expensive gifts. The orchestra is playing, the children are dancing, everyone is happy and happy. Camcorders and cameras are working (a very important detail).
Let’s imagine how children see this situation: they gradually begin to understand that you can receive benefits from the world not for anything, but “for free”, just because you are an orphan. Orphanhood is a way to extort funds from the world. Such a life strategy.
We somehow tried to persuade the sponsor to give gifts not to everyone without exception, but, for example, to allocate in the form of a scholarship to excellent students and shock students, or to those who began to study better in the last quarter — in money or things, it doesn’t matter. The sponsors did not agree, and everyone received small gifts. For what? For being an orphan.
Gradually, children develop a style of behavior «I’m an orphan», which is marked as «effective». Its essence is as follows: you demonstrate your orphanhood, after which you ask the world: anything (sometimes money, sometimes the opportunity to be late or not fulfill the order, an excuse for laziness and irresponsibility :). The world will definitely give it to you or allow it.
Now let’s see what happens next. A pupil of an orphanage comes to life, begins to study or work somewhere in the same strategies: I am an orphan, I am entitled to more. Not for a job well done, but only for being an orphan.
Very soon, painfully and with difficulty, the former orphanage begins to understand that the world does not owe him anything, that everything must be earned. And the developed strategy of behavior collapses. And there are no others!
Who is to blame for the formation of such a strategy of behavior of the orphanage? — Employees of orphanages organizing such actions? — Sponsors? — Is the social situation requiring such measures from the administration?
We believe that the reason is the short duration of our attention, vision. We think about “right now”, and right now gifts for children are great. How to learn to think about «significantly ahead»? How should the orphanage, and indeed the entire social sphere, be organized so that workers are forced (or would like, could) see the long-term consequences of their actions?
For the time being, institutions working with the problem of social orphanhood are arranged in such a way that there is no point in seeing the long-term consequences of their actions. Of course, there are talented educators of orphanages or individual employees of the social sphere, but this is more of an accident. This is the merit of «abnormal» enthusiastic teachers (low bow to them), and not a systemic effect.
But we digress.
So: it is not necessary to accustom children and adults around them (educators and other employees of the orphanage) to handouts and thereby form the psychology of a beggar.
Realizing that the stated thesis sounds at least strange, we emphasize once again: this is not about the fact that children do not need to give gifts! We propose to pay attention to the context in which the child receives certain benefits. You need to understand how each situation looks from the side of the child and try to imagine what consequences this may have for the unborn child.
Helpful Help
Let’s think about what the orphans lack the most. Of course, they are deprived of much, but what is the most essential? What kind of hardships put on them the stamp of orphanhood and thereby fundamentally distinguish them from ordinary children, no matter how poor, but still not orphans?
This is not money, not clothes, not computers — after all, many «ordinary family» children live in much worse conditions than orphans on state support. It’s about something deeper.
Inmates of orphanages are officially referred to as «children who have lost parental care.» And this is the main thing that these children lack — guardianship. It is in this sense that we need to help them. Well, when a child is adopted, then guardianship is restored completely. But most of the children remain draws.
The orphanage needs trustees and trustee assistance (guardianship, trustee are the same root words!).
A lot of myths have grown up around the word «trustee». One of these strange prejudice myths is that the trustee is the one who has a lot of money. This is not true! The trustee is the one who takes care of, that is, takes responsibility for the fate of the child, who thinks about what consequences this or that event and action will entail: We are sure that any sane person can take the position of a trustee.
Any amount of money handed over to a child or an orphanage without regard for the consequences is harmful money, this is not an act of guardianship, not guardianship. The trustee thinks about the consequences.
There are many responsible ways to help children in a difficult social situation, much more economical, and sometimes not requiring money at all. Guardianship requires rather than money and material costs, but the costs of spiritual responsibility. This is sometimes referred to as citizenship.
Various ways of real and important help
Many people believe that being a trustee is something unattainably difficult, that it is «not for ordinary people», and in general «it’s all scary and incomprehensible.» We want to show that there are many ways of real help and, therefore, real guardianship in the above sense.
Method one. The children of the orphanage lack a positive image of an adult, an ordinary normal adult with his exploits, worries, interests and household trifles. The meeting of a child with such a person (only a real meeting!) will determine his future life and help him become an adult himself.
Method two. The child of the orphanage is extremely lacking in the experience of interacting with the outside world — the city, nature, other people. A trustee can include a teenager in his circle of friends, in his club, section or company. Can find a feasible job for the child in his spare time and discuss with him his (and his?) successes and failures.
A small caveat: if you already include a child in your company, in a section or club, then “for real”, and not as an orphan. This means that you need to demand from him responsibility and honor, help and a “head on his shoulders” — all that you demand from yourself and your friends. Sometimes to forgive, sometimes to swear — in short, so that everything is “for real”.
Forgiveness and impunity “if I don’t want to, I won’t, they’ll put me in another section” brings up the same dependent and lover of “freebies”, and not an adult.
Method three. Social orphans do not have the experience of a normal family life. Some have no experience of life in any kind of family at all, many have such that it would be better not to have it: But these children grow up and form families of their own. And how to create your own family, if you have never lived in a real family and, by and large, you don’t know what it is ?!
Sad statistics show that orphans breed orphans.
Therefore, the most valuable help to an orphan is the opportunity to live in a family. In other words: if you take a child from an orphanage into your family for some time, you will provide him with invaluable help in gaining a very important life experience.
All the same reservation about the present: «to take to live in a family» — this does not mean arranging a holiday for the child every day. He needs the most real experience of life in the family, including everything that happens:
- walking the dog and taking out the trash
- responsibility for the «little brother» or just for the younger,
- birthday present and cakes on the weekend,
- a trip to my mother at work,
- a slap on the back of the head from the «father» for having acted «not like a man»,
- showdown,
- shared family outing and more.
There are many options for how exactly such a guardianship action can be formalized legally. Contact orphanages, they will tell you about them.
Method four. A child in an orphanage needs a good education. As a rule, children from orphanages and boarding schools study worse than their peers. There is such a term — “neglect”, this is when no one cared for a child in childhood: And it seems that the head is bright, and it tries, but the grades are bad. Because it is much more difficult for such children to learn, you have to “wade through” and take with a fight what ordinary children easily slipped through, reading a book on the couch with their grandmother. It’s no secret that the elementary school curriculum is mastered largely through reading books and walking with parents, and not at school.
But a child from an orphanage rarely gets into a good school, and if he does, he often «doesn’t pull» and is transferred to an auxiliary one. First, the child needs an individual educational program and, therefore, a talented teacher. If you are so educated that you can teach a child to learn, then you are worthless! Help at least one, and this is guardianship of the highest standard!
If you are not an educator, then you could help those educators who know how to conduct individual educational programs for abandoned children, but do not receive anything for it, since the state does not know how to pay for it.
A couple of examples: a branch of Sberbank in the city of Zheleznogorsk paid for an educational program for children and teachers of the Orphanage; The Krasnoyarsk Non-Ferrous Metals Plant has been helping for several years in holding winter development schools, in which the children of the plant workers and the Orphanage take part.
Of course, most of us are not a savings bank or a factory. But there are simpler options: the establishment of a scholarship for a pupil of an orphanage who studies best of all. Or the one that corrected the most threes or twos in a quarter. Or, for example, the best problem solver for ingenuity. Or someone who has time to study and play sports. There are many options, you can even give a scholarship not in cash.
Estimate: 100 r. per month for a pupil of an orphanage — a HUGE amount, and it is quite enough. Suppose 5 scholarships are established in various categories, we get 500 rubles. per month. Total per year: 6000 rubles.
If the process of applying for scholarships and selecting fellows is arranged “correctly”, then this meager amount will be much more effective than an expensive TV set “just donated”. Since the amount given out in this way teaches you that you need to work in life, that nothing comes for free. And yet such an action shows the child that someone is interested in his studies, that it is worth studying, even if his “like real parents” don’t care about it.
The list of options and methods is not limited. We are sure that for everyone who wants to take a civil position, it is possible to come up with an individual, acceptable option for him to help the children of the orphanage. Everything starts small.
The most important thing is to learn to “look far” and see the possible future of the child behind every daily action.
Lyrical digression
By and large, it’s not about orphans. Just the number of abandoned children says terrible things about us and our house.
In principle, it is not a problem to accommodate a significant part of orphans: you need to give them to Adventists. Better not even ours, but American ones — they asked, they have money, for some reason they need our orphans (why — it doesn’t matter, that’s their problem). And we will continue to live like this, giving birth to children drunk and throwing them out into the street.
Here is such a big cuckoo.