Mentoring Programs Support Vulnerable Children in Eurasia

Shabnam Almammadova will never forget the day she was watching television at home in Azerbaijan and saw a journalist ask an orphan about his greatest dream. The boy’s eyes welled with tears as he answered that he wanted an older brother—but knew it was impossible. Touched, Almammadova resolved “to make the impossible possible for kids like him.”

Harsh economic conditions associated with the fall of the Soviet Union dramatically increased the number of children in orphanages, says Antonina Shepina of Moscow’s National Foundation for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a leading child welfare organization in the region. Material conditions vary between institutions, but in many cases children’s opportunities to form relationships with people outside the orphanage are limited. “Excursions [to the museum, the circus, or the theater] don’t give the children an opportunity to really interact with the outside world,” said Shepina. “They take the children there on a bus, take them on a tour of the museum, and then put them right back on the bus to go home.” To fill the gap, young people like Almammadova are providing much-needed mentoring support to orphans throughout Eurasia.

Almammadova recruited a team of volunteers to mentor children at orphanages in her country’s capital, Baku, based on the internationally known Big Brothers Big Sisters model. Among the “Bigs” visiting the orphans were several alumni of U.S.-government sponsored exchange programs. Almammadova spent at year studying at Old Dominion University in Virginia through the US State Department’s Eurasian Undergraduate Exchange (UGRAD) Program, an experience that changed her perception of community service. “I understood that money is not everything,” she reflected.

Big Brothers Big Sisters has now spread to Georgia, where Almammadova helped fellow UGRAD alumna Tatia Murakashvili establish a mentoring program with orphans and internally displaced children in Tbilisi. Supportive, long-term relationships are particularly important following the August 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia, according to Nana Kandelaki, a psychologist and the director of Murakashvili’s partner school in Tbilisi. “For these children, ‘tank’ and ‘bomb’ were common words—they are psychologically affected,” Kandelaki explained. Before Big Brothers Big Sisters, visitors came occasionally, “but just once, for several hours… this doesn’t have a real outcome in the future. They need to meet people who will be role models, help their personal and professional growth, and spend some time with them.” In both Georgia and Azerbaijan, the mentors and their “Littles” are still meeting regularly.

UGRAD alumni in Moldova started a similar program last fall called Best Buddies, in which mentors lead extracurricular activities such as an English Club, Drama Club, and Computer Club for teenage orphans in Chisinau. “The lessons are useful for our future,” commented Daniel, one of the youth involved. “It’s good that the teachers are young—they explain better this way and they give more details and have a more friendly approach to us.” Olga Bogdan, one of the project organizers, hopes to expand Best Buddies from a single orphanage in Chisinau to a network of institutions throughout the city, and eventually to other regions of Moldova. “[Great] results are achieved by making small steps,” she said. “We hope that our work will motivate the next generation to think about their future and things they can change in their lives.”

Established by the U.S. Congress in 1992, the Global Undergraduate Exchange (Global UGRAD) Program in Eurasia and Central Asia and the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program are programs of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State and are administered by IREX. The Global UGRAD Program was previously known as the FREEDOM Support Act Undergraduate Program (FSAU) and the Eurasian Undergraduate Exchange Program (UGRAD).

The Big Brothers Big Sisters programs in Azerbaijan and Georgia were implemented with funding from the ECA Alumni Small Grants Program. While the model is based on the Big Brothers Big Sisters concept, the programs have not gone through the registration process with Big Brothers Big Sisters International and do not have official affiliate status. The Best Buddies program in Moldova is sponsored by the U.S. Embassy – Chisinau Alumni Resource Center with logistics and technical support from IREX Moldova. the mentors and their “Littles” are still meeting regularly.