Since 1997, ROOF has been a pioneer in providing high-quality educational opportunities for children and young adults from Russian orphanages. Our aim is to help each child or young adult by providing opportunities and encouragement to learn and grow; to take advantage of their own talents and gifts and make the most of them, working […]
What is charity?
What is charity work about? The meaning of ‘charity’ is, of course, love. This is what Fr Alexander Schmemman says in Great Lent… Love is … the foundation, the very life of the Church which is, in the words of St Ignatius of Antioch, the ‘unity of faith and love’. … [Look at] Christ’s parable […]
2005
ROOF opens the second “social hotel” for graduates of the Belskoye Ustye MHSD orphanage, ROOF’s Abilitation Centre (AC). The AC provides 5 to 6 more residential places for young adults who wish to escape the fate of the adult institution. The first “social hotel”, opened through the USAID grant, goes on to become the Pskov […]
2004
ROOF opens a group for graduates of MHSD orphanages at its Post-Orphanage Education Centre. Around 30 students, many living in adult institutions, come to study at the Post-Orphanage Education Centre.
2003
As ROOF management capacity focuses primarily on the Post-Orphanage Centre, orphanage-based programs slowly begin to close. Over the next 5 years through 2008, the number of in-orphanage programs in Moscow dwindles from 10 to four, as programs at the Post-Orphanage Centre take centre-stage. By 2013, only one of the original in-orphanage education programs exists, in […]
2002
A number of ROOF’s finest teachers leave to establish their own successful Post-Orphanage Education Centre, Moscow’s Big Change / Большая Перемена. Now Moscow has 2 separate post-orphanage evening schools in different regions of the city, providing an expanded number of openings for post-orphanage students.
2001
A volunteer from the Belskoye-Ustye Summer Camp in 2000 decides to apply for a USAID through ROOF. With the grant, she and her team successfully open the first “social hotel” program for graduates of Belskoye-Ustye MHSD orphanage, enabling several young adults to escape the fate of lifetime institutionalization and work over time to develop the […]
2000
ROOF outfits two children’s libraries – with everything from the books and media lists through the soft furniture and decorations – in two orphanages in Pereslavl-Zalessky, with a grant generously made by the Moscow International Women’s Club. Non-experts who solicit the advice of children’s librarians to compile the inventory lists compile library inventory lists – […]
1999
The ROOF social task force expands (over the course of 1999 and 2000) to include around 50 people but now includes more trained teachers. The bias away from bright young graduate students and toward trained teachers is a slight departure from the original mission, part of which was to illustrate that the presence with constancy […]
1998
A group of friends in Moscow raises money to send graduate students, the majority of whom are not trained as teachers, into four Moscow orphanages. The goal is to help children catch up to their appropriate age groups in school in all subject areas. The project was a rapid success; the young adults saw the […]
