Programs

Embrace The Children

Changing the lives and futures of children in hopeless and often fatal circumstances.

501(c)3 Charitable Organization

Calling All ETC Super Heroes ...Yes, This Means You!

Embrace the Children is hosting its annual benefit dinner, themed “Heroes and Villains”, A Halloween Party on Saturday, October 21, 2006. While costumes are optional, we hope everyone will come (with or without costumes) and bring their friends. Please come for a night of Super Heroics, including dinner, silent auction, raffles and other Ghoulish Surprises!! We’re looking forward to seeing our every day HEROES and friends!!! Call Shannon Mogilinski for more details @ 630-584-3729

Cures for Kids- Medical Outreach Program

Regular deliveries of medicine are one of ETC’s primary activities. This aid is supplied through donations from the States, and from items purchased in Russia. Embrace supplies money, medication, disinfectants, scabies creams, lice treatments, and vitamins. We always need sources to help with this assistance.

Real Stories from Russia:

	“I held a tiny child who was deaf from an ear infection. For lack of a few dollars of antibiotics, this child was now deaf.” Jeanne Beckner, American RN, Embrace Board Member living in Russia.
	Embrace prioritizes medication. “The medicine has been so very well received. In Alexandrov [orphanage]… they were extremely grateful to receive it. The orphanage in Gus was just overjoyed to have medicine also. “ JB
	“I traveled 9 hours to one of the poorest orphanages in the region. The children were dirty, wearing rags for clothes. They have lice so bad, many have scratched out hunks of hair, leaving sores on their scalps.” JB

Embrace began a Lice Kits program proactively addressing the need to alleviate infections. The kit contains a one dose treatment of lice shampoo with nit comb, a simple hat and regular hair comb. (Hat and comb allow the orphanage staff to dispose of the old infested ones).

Just May 19, 2004 ”In Alexandrov [orphanage w/60 kids ages birth to 4yrs], they ran out of baby food some weeks ago. They began boiling buckwheat down to a thick paste to feed the children. This of course, made them very sick with diarrhea, then dehydration. The medicine we brought them from Embrace was to treat this in infants, so they were extremely grateful.” JB

Embrace has stream-lined emergency response abilities with proactive planning as in the story above where small amounts of money and donated medication are kept on-hand in Russia. In March, an orphanage was found to have very ill children and we responded with Scabies cream and antibiotics arriving from America to the hands of the children within one week.

The need goes on…

Keeping Kids Home- Abandonment Prevention & Milk Kitchen Program

Keeping children with their mothers, grandmothers, family, is the best goal any charity can have. Embrace believes that if we can reduce stress in caring for children while living in poverty, by providing food, medicine, vitamins and other humanitarian aid, we provide hope for families, which in turn, keeps them together. When mothers are not able to feed their children, they give them to the orphanage with the hope that their children will be fed. Our goal is to reduce the number of children in orphanage care and keep families intact.

In Russia, there are no food pantries, Medicaid, to supplement the communities’ destitute families. Embrace supports two different programs to address this community based need.

Embrace’s Abandonment Prevention Program targets very destitute mothers who are at high-risk to abandon their child. We currently support 12 destitute children, 2 of which are invalids, 1 /hydrocephalus, and one set of triplet boys

Real Stories from Russia:

“A little boy we serve had terrible allergies from the result of a bad immunization. He was covered with sores when we first went to visit him. We bought the medicine and gave him the good Heinz cereals and milk to eat. His mom said yesterday he is almost all better and thanks EVERYONE who is helping their family. Isn't that wonderful! In just a short time, what a difference we have made together with just this one family..and in the life of this one boy.” Jeanne Beckner

Embrace supports a Milk Kitchen as well which supplements food, medicine, clothing—basic needs of life—for community families.

Real Stories from Russia:

	“[Murom Orphanage has 120 kids birth to 4yrs.] They had one 6-month-old boy there that had come in from living with his family. He looked like a preemie he was so tiny.” Jeanne Beckner
	“There were many tears as we shared the food with them. A grandmother struggling to keep her 4-month-old granddaughter from the orphanage system after her own daughter died in childbirth.
	Another grandmother caring for an 8 year old girl and a 6 mo old baby--all in the care of this old woman. I gave her some extra boxes of cereal, 50 rubles and a bag of apples. She was crying so hard when she left.” Jeanne Beckner

Jeanne Beckner, Russian Services Coordinator, has witnessed the growth of trust by the community in which she works by helping her impoverished neighbors in addition to the orphaned children.

Orphanage Outreach- Food Assistance & Humanitarian Relief Program

All aspects of orphanage life can be challenging. Embrace strives to ease the hardship on children and the enormous burden on care-takers by assisting with the multiple needs for orphanages. We prioritize food assistance.

Real Stories from Russia- Food Assistance:

	“Many babies in the hospitals are having seizures…no calories in their little brains. They have nothing to feed them but water. I sent 12 boxes of baby food.” Jeanne Beckner, American RN in Russia
	“We have been able to take boxes of oranges, bananas, and apples [into Layhey orphanage]. Most have never eaten a banana. We had a special class to show them how.” JB
	“As we stood and watched the boxes of food being carried in, the chief nurse looked at me with eyes full of tears and said, ‘this is life for the children of our town.’ ” JB
	“Children were eating crayons over the winter because they were so hungry.” JB

Embrace assists with supplemental food supplies. Picture left is one such delivery of fruit, sausages, juice and milk

Real Stories from Russia- Humanitarian Relief - Urgent needs met through short-term goals. ETC supplies clothing, disinfectants, soap, bleach, building maintenance, etc. as needed to stabilize a child or institution.

“I received a call yesterday from the distraught Murom orphanage director. He was making a cry for

help. They have one rust covered tub and a single hose

for 64 children. They have two squatter toilets over in the corner for all the children…including the older girls. He has a hard situation with the officials in the local offices. They gave him some rubles—small amount—and told him to go find sponsors to help. He went all over Murom asking for help. One man gave him a bag of concrete. That is the example of the help he has received.” JB

Embrace Has:

	Purchased two news sinks and one new toilet for Murom Orphanage.
	Replaced a broken boiler system providing heat and hot water to an Orphanage that had none at -50 degrees --below zero!
	Repaired broken clothes dryer so the staff no longer had to hang wet clothes for 60 kids on the piping in the building to dry.