The Crisis Center For Children

The Crisis Center For Children is a charitable social organization. Its key purposes are to prevent and fight against child neglect, abandonment and social orphanhood, and to protect children’s rights. The CCFC was formed in March 2001. Its first project was a telephone counseling line.

More than 7,000 people a year use the telephone counseling line daily to talk about their interpersonal relations, the problems of raising children, family conflicts, violence, or violation of rights among others. At present the telephone line works 24/7.

“Extra Hot Meals” – this is another project for children from poor families and abandoned children. Five days a week, 30 children get cooked meals. This program includes children from very low-income families and children living on the street. The social follow-up service was formed as a part of this project. The task of the social workers is to find out what caused the unfortunate situations in their families or child neglect, and to take measures aimed at rehabilitating these children.

In October 2003, the CCFC opened the Center of Social Rehabilitation for Street Children. This project includes a psychologist and two experienced teachers who provide active cultural and educational development for children. They want to ensure the children enjoy their time at the center; they try to teach them the basic norms of social behaviour and to give them an alternative to spending time out in the streets.

The next project opened by the CCFC was the “Mobile School”. As we know, street children often lose contact with school and give up their studies. Quite often, even children living in families don’t attend school for a while and lag behind in their studies. The task of the Mobile School is to make up for the pedagogical gap for such children. It provides individual studies of basic school subjects with teachers to enable them to receive the state school certificate according to the external studies system. In order to do it, the CCFC has an agreement with School #336 of the Nevsky District on cooperation and interaction. The Mobile School is designed for a group of three to ten children. Its purpose is to bring children back to school. They can either go to classes according to their age or receive the school certificate enabling them to enter a college.

The CCFC has opened a new project called the “Room of Joy” for families with children who have communication problems and autism. They have difficulties in communicating with the world around them and with socializing. For many reasons these families have been pushed beyond the boundaries of “normal” society where they don’t feel free and accepted. This project provides a place where these parents and children feel accepted and supported, not as much by therapists, but by other people who volunteer to participate in the lives of these families.

“Night Hotel” – this project is aimed at providing a comfortable night’s sleep for 10 to 12 children or teenagers. This group includes children who attend the CCFC and who are ready for radical changes in their lives but don’t have the opportunity to stay at home. The purpose of this project is to complete the circle of the social protection for all street children who turned to the CCFC and who are willing to change their lives.

As of May 2006 the CCFC has been running the Family Center project aimed at strengthening families and promoting traditional family values and prevention of child neglect and abandonment.

The center has been running the following activities:

• Organizing and running the monthly cultural and educational meetings for families.
• Helping parents who have experienced the loss of children.
• Helping foster families.

“Ciliba” – In summer a group of “tough” teenagers accompanied by adults travels to the town of Kotlas, in the Archangelsk Region, to help in restoring the 14th century monastery. The objective of this project is to combine the teenagers’ summer holidays with real work in order to acquaint them with the cultural background of Russia and to help them adopt the moral need for labour. At the same time the teenagers enjoy their time in the ecologically clean area where their health improves as well.

The Crisis Center For Children needs support. We need funds to maintain the fully-fledged work of our projects. The children in our care are the socially vulnerable groups of population, i.e. children living on the streets, those living with HIV, families in difficult situations, children with autism and people with limited abilities.

We will be grateful for any kind of support, including financial assistance as well as designated help to children and families.

The bank details for the foreign currency transfer are the following:

CRISIS CENTER FOR CHILDREN
BANK SANKT-PETERSBURG OAO
Moskovsky outlet
Transit foreign currency account # 40703840016000203475 USD
Transit foreign currency account # 40703978616000203475 EUR