Changing the Public's Perception About Adoption
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Changing the Public's Perception About Adoption
By Sveta Graudt
Special to The Moscow Times
Sveta Yegorova didn't expect anything special on her 15th birthday last year.
Both of her parents had died several years before, and she had no other family
to look after her. At the time, Yegorova was placed in a shelter. She was then
subsequently moved to an orphanage near her native Smolensk.
So when one of her schoolteachers told her that someone had come to see her on
her birthday, the news came as a complete surprise.
A woman named Larisa Maslakova was waiting for her. Maslakova was responding to
an invitation by the Secure Futures program run by Kidsave International, a
U.S.-based nonprofit organization that offers opportunities to become mentors,
or foster or adoptive parents to orphaned children.
Maslakova took Yegorova for a walk on what would be the first of several
meetings between the two. Yegorova spent Christmas with Maslakova's family,
then other holidays and weekends. Eventually, Yegorova traveled to Minsk to
meet Maslakova's parents.
This is an all-too-rare happy ending within the confines of child
institutionalization in Russia. In January, Kidsave International released a
major study that revealed Russian attitudes toward orphanages and adoption.
The study found that eight out of 10 Russians have never considered raising
someone who is not their biological child, and that the vast majority of the
population would not consider adoption at this time. Seventy-four percent of
respondents cited low income as the reason for not adopting.
Out of 170,000 children ready for adoption, just 15,000 are adopted each year,
said Galina Trostanetskaya, who heads the department for social and pedagogical
support and rehabilitation of children. "This is too little -- 10 times more
adoptions are needed," she said, adding that roughly half of these children are
adopted by foreigners.
According to statistics cited by Trostanetskaya, there are currently about
700,000 orphans under the age of 16 living in Russia.
These issues struck a chord with the Moscow business community last December at
Kidsave's first annual orphan fundraiser, which took place at the Aerostar
Hotel. In addition to raising money for its programs in Smolensk, St.
Petersburg, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and soon, Moscow, Kidsave aims to change public
opinion regarding adoption.
But it is not a campaign that Kidsave can push through on its own, said Eric
Batsie, the director of Kidsave in Moscow. "Our goal is to bring everyone
together: the government, businessmen, NGO leaders."
They have an uphill battle. Children are ill-prepared for real-life challenges
outside the orphanage walls when, at the age of 16, they graduate from high
school, and receive very little, if any, support from institutions. Unaware of
their rights, orphans are left to fend for themselves for the first time.
According to Kidsave, one in three orphanage "graduates" is homeless, one in
five commits a crime and one in ten commits suicide.
"I am completely positive that each child who hasn't been taken completely, as
I put it, out of state circulation, hasn't simply been found by his or her
adoptive parents," said television personality Svetlana Sorokina at the
Aerostar fundraiser. Sorokina recently adopted a little girl. "And if something
can be done to bring both parties as close as possible, I think that it is
possible to solve this problem."
"What struck me about Kidsave is their focus to adopt or foster Russian
children," said Bob Foresman, managing director of Dresdner Kleinwort
Wasserstein in Russia, who also attended the Kidsave event. Foresman, who
recently adopted a 9-year-old Russian girl, talked about the taboo of adoption
that still clings to many Russians. In Soviet times, it was literally against
the accepted ideology to admit that the state could not care for its own
children. "There is suspicion among a lot of Russians that there might be
something wrong with these children," Foresman said. "I think that Russian
society is ready if there is more public education about adoption and about the
need for adoption."
Changes are coming, however slowly, and Yegorova is one orphan who has
benefited from them. She has recently been discovering the joys of domestic
life. "At Larisa's house, I get a sense of a family, of a home," Yegorova said.
"Since I started coming to their house, I realized that I have acquired good
friends. When I see how children are talking with their parents, I feel
better."
Yegorova likes dancing, singing, crocheting and reading Pushkin. She helps
Maslakova around the house and says she is like an older sister to Larisa's
three younger children.
"I would like my future family to be like that," Yegorova said.
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A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown