Better by the Dozen

Some years ago my wife, Kayta and I, stumbled on an amazing scheme to help Russian kids who'd somehow lost their parents.

This is the story of how we found the Vladimir Children's Fund, and our meeting with one of the Families, the Kundin- Sass's

The fund is a private charity, small and intimate it the way it helps, in contrast to often bleak state orphanages. Only one a dollar a day per child comes in as support. from the State

The fund works like this. Families which are already large with 6 or more natural kids, in some cases volunteer to take in many more orphans of all ages, , and so mega families are formed.

The ones we know about and have visited have been in the Vladimir area a few hours from Moscow by train. But we think they are all over the country , these dynamic conglomerations of homemade help.

With sometimes 12 or more children, half adopted, half natural, an interesting dynamic seems to form whereby the kids almost run the houses themselves, (meet Masha in this story ) with lots of inspiration for the overseeing from the original parents like, in this case, Olga and Vitaly.

We visited some of these mega families and were so impressed that Katya, arriving back in Australia, began raising money to to send to this Vladimir Children's fund, partly because she sorrowed for the country of her birth and it huge problems of transition., and partly because we were so intrigued by the concept, thinking it might work elsewhere too. Even in Australia, maybe?

Over the years, she's raised about $7000. Last night, we had a fund raising screening at the very special Avoca Beach Picture Theatre , selling tickets for the marvelous film about Tolstoy, The Last Station.

With much hard work and the help of many friends in the Russian community, her church and Avoca itself, Katya mustered a large audience (Who loved the film) and another 1400 dollars was raised which will soon be on it's way to the Vladimir Children's fund.

Thank you to Normal and Beth Hunter, the Theatre owners and friends of Russia.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Vladimir Children's fund
• Kundin-Sass family
• katerina Korolkevich-Rubbo
• Mike Rubbo
• Russian orphans
• better by the dozen
• Avoca Beach
• Avoca Beach Picture Theatre
• Russian foster care