ROOF's news this year

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Dear all friends of ROOF,Russian Christmas

It has been an eventful year for ROOF. We hope in this newsletter to bring you up to date with some of what’s been going on, and let you know how you can help all of this good work continue.

New web site: www.roofnet.org
We have a new website! Please take a look at www.roofnet.org. Not only is the site design new, but all content has been substantially rewritten so that everything is up to date. The new site allows significant interaction with its users, so please be sure to register with the site so that you can join discussions, add comments, receive newsletters and get involved! There is also interaction with facebook, so if you are a facebook user, it is easy to ‘like’ content on our website and share it with your friends, as well as add comments to www.roofnet.org content so that they will show also on your facebook wall.

Children at PodolskMaking a difference to children in Russian orphanages
ROOF’s teaching support has made all the difference to the young adults who are now leaving the orphanage in Podolsk. We have been offering additional education in Podolsk since 1999, when Anya was 5 years old. Now she is 16. Everybody cried saying good bye to Anya in September. At the age of 16 she is serious, responsible, friendly and open-minded; she is quite ready to live on her own. Anya has entered a pedagogical college in the town of Serpukhov and she’s got a dream: to work with children helping them to find their place in life, to get a taste for learning new things; to do for others what her teachers did for her. After college she hopes to enter a pedagogical institute, and the main thing: “to have a family and children”.

More details about ROOF’s orphanage projects can be found at www.roofnet.org/orphanage

To support our work in orphanages: www.roofnet.org/donate

Pskov region projects
In September a new resident, Dima, 21, entered ROOF’s Abilitation Centre (“halfway” house) in Porkhov. Dima begged to be admitted to the Centre refusing to go to the adult institution where young people who ‘graduate’ from the Belskoye-Ustye orphanage are usually sent . Some kids just want to go to the adult institution because they know they do not have to work there at all. But Dima likes to work. He works about the house and can cook and clean too -- he shows every sign of someone who will be able to take care of himself without need of institutional care. He has good manners and the other boys have learned some from him: to say “bon appétit” at meals, “please come again” at seeing off guests, “nice to meet you” getting to meet new people etc.  The boys gave him a warm welcome.

Abilitation Centre in the snowThe Abilitation Centre project gives these young people their freedom from the adult institution and the right to live independently. Please consider helping us continue this important project: www.roofnet.org/donate

At the moment, the Abilitation Centre is only able to find spaces for boys and young men, since the house is quite small and our only full-time live-in carer is male. We would love to open a similar house for female residents as soon as possible. If you are interested in supporting us in this endeavour, please contact andrew@roofnet.org or make a donation towards the project: www.roofnet.org/donate

StasJust a kilometre away from the Belskoye-Ustye orphanage itself ROOF has its Baranovo house from which we host various projects for the benefit of children still in the orphanage, such as the annual summer camp (www.roofnet.org/summer_camp) and other educational projects throughout the year. The caretaker of this house is Stas, a former resident of the orphanage who now not only lives independently, but also takes care of this responsible job for ROOF, looking after the house and keeping everything well maintained and in good order. We are planning to open a new project in 2011 bringing various specialists from both Russia and abroad to visit the orphanage and work with the children, and they would also be hosted in the Baranovo house.

If you are interested in helping us get this project of the ground, please help: www.roofnet.org/donate

More details about the Pskov-region projects can be found at www.roofnet.org/pskov

Post-Orphanage Education Centre
Over the last decade, the Moscow Post-Orphanage Education Centre has grown to be by far ROOF's largest single project, in the process developing its own friends, volunteers, donors, sponsors and its own community culture. ROOF's wish has always been to be a grass-roots organization, specializing in developing and growing projects, and it has become clear to us that the Education Centre is now able to stand on its own two feet and work out its own future plans and development, ably led by Olga Tikhomirova who has now been directing the Centre for five years. Hence this school year (2010-11) is the first year that the Post-Orphanage Centre is not administered centrally as a project of ROOF but is now a separate organization, called ‘Step-Up’ (Vverkh in Russian). ROOF is still making a significant contribution to the funding of the Centre though, and any help towards this is welcome! www.roofnet.org/donate

You can help children and young people like Anya, Stas and Dima

Please consider making a donation to support our work (www.roofnet.org/donate), or better, a recurring donation or regular payment. Even a small amount paid regularly every month helps us to provide opportunities for others like Anya, Stas and Dima, and regular payments help us to plan better. If you wish to talk about setting up a regular payment, please contact andrew@roofnet.org

Ways to help
All the information in this section can be found at www.roofnet.org/funds

USA:

  • USA direct donation link: donateus.roofnet.org
  • Shopping at Amazon: if you shop at Amazon, please start by using this link: amazon.roofnet.org. This way ROOF will receive a small commission on every purchase you make.
  • Using ebay, you can make a donation, add a donation to a purchase, add a donation link when selling an item, or donate the proceeds of a sale. You can also set ROOF as your preferred charity so that it will be easy to find the link to these things if you may do any of them in the future. Setting ROOF as your preferred charity also increases our likelihood of being an ebay highlighted organization at some point: ebay (USA) link: ebayus.roofnet.org.
  • Online shopping at IGive.com can be set up to donate a proportion of the sale to ROOF. To set up ROOF as your default organization as you join IGive, use this link: www.iSearchiGive.com/roofnet
  • Web searching at IGive: Use IGive as your search engine and give $0.02 to ROOF every time you search the web: www.iSearchiGive.com/roofnet    

UK:

  • UK direct donation link: donateuk.roofnet.org
  • Shopping at Amazon (UK): if you shop at Amazon, please start by using this link: amazonuk.roofnet.org. This way ROOF will receive a small commission on every purchase you make.
  • Using ebay (UK), you can make a donation, add a donation to a purchase, add a donation link when selling an item, or donate the proceeds of a sale. You can also set ROOF as your preferred charity so that it will be easy to find the link to these things if you may do any of them in the future. Setting ROOF as your preferred charity also increases our likelihood of being an ebay highlighted organization at some point: ebay (UK) link: ebayuk.roofnet.org.

Thank you
Thank you for reading this email to the end! If anything is not clear, or if you have any questions at all about the information included in this email or anything else, please email andrew@roofnet.org. Thank you again!

Andrew Williams
Russian Orphan Opportunity Fund (ROOF)
www.roofnet.org

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