MOSCOW, OCT. 22, 2002 (Zenit.org).- Since 1995, Catholic volunteers of the parish of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul of Moscow have helped broken families with handicapped children. Now they hope to carry their work further.
In Russia, one out of every three families with a handicapped child lacks one of the parents. Since the mother’s time is taken up caring for her handicapped child, she is unable to work. The family is maintained by the handicapped child’s minimal pension, and the mother’s state subsidy for looking after the child, the local Caritas reported.
The majority of children with physical disabilities have a high learning capacity, but they only receive very incomplete state education at home, which hampers their formation and threatens their professional future.
They are in need of supplementary classes, and the financial problems of these broken families also call for psychological and spiritual assistance, both for mother and child.
A program to provide extra classes has been in existence for five years and has the support of the parish and its priest, Father Bogdan Severinik, as well as of Caritas-European Russia. Volunteers have been trained as psycho-pedagogues and social assistants.
To expand, the program calls for a computer room for the children, psychological help for the mothers, funds to support the families, and possibilities for the students to complete their training.
About 4,200 euro ($4,089) have been collected, but an additional 7,600 euro are needed. That is where the parish hopes foreign benefactors can help. The parish shares premises with other parishes in the Church of St. Louis of the French, on Malaya Lubianka Street, behind the main KGB building.
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For more information, contact Elena Baranova, the project’s author, at the parish: peterpaul.msk@caritas.ru.
Donations may be sent to the Caritas-European Russia account, specifying the name of the project: “Proyect domashniaya shkola dlya dietei-invalidov”
ACCOUNTS:
Conversbank LTD
109172, Moscow, Kotelnicheskaya nab. 33/1
BNK 044525921
corr/acc 3010 1810 5000 0000 0921
account 4070 3810 8000 0000 0270 (1882/16)
s.w.i.f.t CONV RU MM
Or:
Conversbank LTD
109172, Moscow, Kotelnicheskaya nab. 33/1
BNK 044525921
account 4070 3978 3000 0000 0405 (01882/0020) EURO
s.w.i.f.t. CONV RU MM
Caritas-European Russia may be contacted by telephone or fax at (07095) 9560585, or by e-mail at secretary@caritas.ru. Its Web page may be visited at www.caritas.ru.
