Artist Maria Eliseeva: about how to learn to help others, and about five years without Ilya Segalovich. “There is no“ stamp ”on children from special boarding schools - they were just started by teachers Maria Eliseeva biography

More than 20 years ago, the family of Yandex co-founder Ilya Segalovich and artist Maria Eliseeva began to take care of orphans. They took care of a class in a boarding school for orphans with developmental disabilities, were foster parents of children diagnosed with mental retardation, and organized holidays in orphanages. Today Maria works with 12 boarding schools, runs two organizations, and many of her “difficult” foster children have grown up and got a chance for a normal life. Her story in the first person.

One of my foster girls is learning how to use a new coffee machine. I love coffee very much, and although I myself, alas, cannot now, I am happy to brew it for others and often run around with a cezve. The volumes of coffee consumption in our house are such that it became clear long ago: we need a coffee machine. When Ilya was alive, he often spoke with pride about what coffee makers they had in Yandex, and he dreamed of such a house. But we never bought it then - they are very noisy.

In 1993, Ilya and I became friends with the guys from the boarding school on Baumanskaya. First time we went there with my Italian friend. The deputy director showed us nothing, except for the gloomy dining room, but then in one of the groups, where we hardly begged us to let us in, she lined up the children and told them to sing. The sight is heartbreaking: orphanage children are standing, unkempt, with hungry eyes, and singing a song about the Motherland ...

Then I thought that I could come to them with my own children, if only just to play. And we started to come - to one class, to 12 children. All of them had diagnoses: officially it is called "oligophrenia", but it seems to me that the majority had just pedagogical neglect. We were drawing with them.

We took one girl to visit for the weekend, then another, then a boy. We didn't choose anyone on purpose, just some of the children became friends with our daughters more than others. At first, everyone had an equal chance. They drew lots to see who came which weekend. The boarding students were then 11-12 years old, and our girls were younger, the oldest was six. Then three guys began to live with us. We took them from the whole class, because our children asked for it.

Many employees begin to treat children differently: at first they simply restrain themselves, and then wean themselves from official treatment

Of course, there were strong quarrels, the girls could say something like: "Mom, give Sasha back to the boarding school as soon as possible, he calls us fat fools!" I had to talk a lot with them, calm them down, console them. Now I understand: it is better to accept children who are younger than their bloodline into the family.

I have another adopted daughter, she was recently in the hospital, her knee was operated on. Parents abandoned it when they learned about external features that did not affect intelligence in any way. Due to her appearance after the orphanage, she was sent to an auxiliary boarding school and diagnosed with mental retardation.

Now she is 23, we have known each other for almost 15 years. She came to me after graduating from the boarding school. The boarding school participated in a program supported by the Tretyak Foundation: children from orphanages went on vacation to Swedish families. Our girl went to Sweden several times and started speaking simple phrases in Swedish. Then we found a teacher for her. Now she speaks fluent English and some Swedish, last summer she entered the Institute of Recreational Medicine.

I really don't like counting: how many children have passed through our family and art studio. Whom to count? Those who came to the studio once, who walked for six months or studied with us for many years? For example, we have been cooperating with one of the Moscow boarding schools since 1997. Each pupil has the opportunity to come to us. It happens that they are skeptical: well, drawing, some kind of nonsense. But when the guys leave the boarding school and are alone, they come to us, and we help if possible.

Those who work in the boarding school are ordinary people with their own problems. When you find out, for example, that this cute teacher, with whom we recently drank tea, hit a girl, you yourself need a psychologist to calm down and continue to communicate with her. But you need to understand: she has a lot of girls like that and - yes, they can be rude, not come to spend the night, kick in the glass. And first of all, we think about how to support this teacher so that there are fewer such disruptions.

We take caregivers to educational events in Israel, England, Spain, USA, where orphans are adequately treated. And before our very eyes, many employees begin to treat children differently: at first they just try to restrain themselves, and then they get out of the habit of official, cruel treatment.

Celebration at the Children of Mary Center.

Once we decided to take a boy whom we had known for several years by that time. We then lived in a tiny two-room apartment with four of our children and two foster girls. Sasha, the boy, needed a separate room. In the guardianship they told me: you can take it only when - and if - additional living space appears.

In the late 1990s, Ilya's salary was such that our large company was barely enough for food. In general, I only had expenses.

And then my friends, doctors and hospital clowns Patch Adams and a few other people borrowed, and some just gave us money for an apartment. We took an apartment in Perovo on a mortgage and were able to pick up Sasha and several other children.

By that time Sasha turned 14. We sent him to the inclusive school "Ark", where our adopted and native children studied. Sasha didn't really want to study. After school he entered the university, but soon dropped out. He said he wanted to work, tried many activities. In the end, I really wanted to become a flight attendant. But in all the documents there was a diagnosis of "oligophrenia" - where is he with him? Then Sasha himself went to a neuropsychiatric dispensary, and the diagnosis was withdrawn. He was then in his early twenties, and it was very difficult to catch up. But he passed all the exams, including English, and started working at Aeroflot. Now it flies around the world. Lives the life he likes. And for this he did a lot.

Classes in the home studio of Maria Eliseeva.

I am sure there is no "stamp" on these children. Yes, some of them believe that the whole world owes them, but not everyone thinks so. They have different characters, different fates. Leaving the boarding school, they really need support: they are not used to being alone, and then suddenly there is a separate apartment, and it is necessary to somehow improve their life. Very often at this stage they come and spend the night with us a couple of times a week.

Now I have two public organizations: Children of Mary and Pelican. "Pelican" deals with boarding school graduates and adults from neuropsychiatric institutions. Artists and tutors, volunteers and employees, including my older children, graduates, teach pupils painting and drawing, modeling and ceramics, cooking, theatrical art, school disciplines. There are Italian and English clubs for seniors. We travel a lot, set up camps, make friends with the children and teachers of school # 1 in Beslan.

"Maria's Children" exist on private donations and grants, "Pelican" so far mainly only on my funds.

The streaming method is not mine. I love the family atmosphere more

Of course, children are children, and everything happens, but punishing, scolding is not about me. I have always been against punishment. In my opinion, this is not an option. Difficult situations need to be resolved, but alternatives to punitive options can always be found.

It happens that guys in the studio steal money. They think we won't notice. They think they need money more than we do. Recently one boy started using drugs and stole quite a large amount. Since this happened, it means that life pressed him so hard. Before his illness, he himself always helped everyone. We need to treat him, but for this he needs to want it himself.

Our children know that it is forbidden to come to the studio under the influence of alcohol or drugs. And yet, if such a problem arises, we will not give up, we will help, but on neutral territory.

Now we are cooperating with 12 boarding schools for children and adults. We have never set ourselves the task of recruiting as many groups as possible. The streaming method is not mine. I like the family atmosphere more. I am a mother. Do you understand? It is important for me to delve into all the details.

about the author

Maria Eliseeva - Head of the Art Center "Children of Mary" and the organization of assistance to adults "Pelican". She rehabilitates and socially adapts orphans and graduates of orphanages through creativity, primarily drawing. Maria is the heroine of the project about professionals in non-profit organizations “NKO-Profi”. The project is being conducted by the Social Information Agency, the Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation and the Stada Group in Russia.

“I myself taught my child
understand English, my baby already speaks English sentences ”. Surely for many mothers this is a fantasy phrase. English always
was and still remains the ultimate dream. As a linguist and educator, I know that
it's really not easy. And how does mom feel like doing it perfectly
necessary. I myself have been speaking English since childhood (thanks to my mom for that!) And
I raise my children bilingual too. Every day I watch a miracle
the formation of a new language and I never cease to be amazed at how talented everyone is
kids. My daughter Nicoletta is 6 years old and my son Jean is 1.5 years old. I started to teach daughter
English at 1 year 3 months, and at 3 years old she already spoke full
sentences, and at 4 years old she could communicate fluently in English. I'll be honest
it was not difficult for me, behind the back are internships and a lot of teaching experience. But
I never left the thought that this should not be the property of the elect,
the technique should be available to every mother!

What are the secrets of learning toddler
English language? First, it is love. Love for the baby and the desire to give him
all the best. After all, it is she who gives mom ideas and strength. As for
methods, then it is as follows: English should be presented to the child,
as a family - through emotions and vivid images. The kid should never be taught
with translation into the native language - this creates a barrier and does not give him full
dive into a new reality! Need a dive, yes. But it shouldn't be
aggressive. You need to immerse yourself in the tongue gently, gradually, giving the child time
adapt. Gentle immersion has another advantage:
dosed amount of material, the kid puts everything on the shelves very quickly
in his head and begins to use it.

There is another secret: your speech
mom has to build in a special way. For
the baby's mother's purring pronunciation is not so important (or lack of it
Much more important is how her phrases are constructed. If you want to beat some
situation in English, remember that it must contain
keywords that you will string new ones, reinforcing them with gestures and
facial expressions.

I call this the principle of beads
on a thread ". Let me give you a short example: “A cat. It's a cat.
Nice, nice cat. Stroke, stroke the cat ”. Visit us on Instagram @my_english_baby and
watch my daughter teach this little lesson for her brother 🙂 So, if
you started talking about a cat, then support your lesson with bright pictures and slides
- let the kid hear the phrases “a fluffy cat,
a big cat, a small cat ”. Don't aim right away
tell your child what other animals are called in English! Let him know
only one word - cat
- but it will acquire the necessary "satellites": big, small, fluffy
- without which it will simply gather dust in your baby's piggy bank.

In my English course for
babies have implemented all these principles, so mothers very quickly see
result. I highly recommend it to all moms who are eager to teach
your baby and gradually build up your own knowledge. I created it
especially for you - so that you can independently give your child a miracle
second language! Taking the course is easy and pleasant, even if you have
not enough knowledge. You can try it, you can see how on it
mothers are engaged, what success the kids have achieved. All this on my website

07.10.2016
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She was an artist, helped orphans, and married an aspiring programmer. He also created Yandex, but died in his prime. In an exclusive interview with the website, the widow of Ilya Segalovich, Maria Eliseeva, told how they lived before they were includedForbes why the Ministry of Education is afraid of the Jewish Passover and why its studio is sending teachers from Beslan to Israel.

Almost immediately after meeting Ilya Segalovich, you went to English courses together. What for?
- I met an American clown Patch Adams. I was told about a clown who believes that laughter can be treated, and for this he comes to children's hospitals. I wanted to invite him to my studio. I took a dictionary and wrote him a letter, I had school passive English. He arrived, and then invited me to create clowning together, and I went to St. Petersburg by train in a clown carriage. It was an incredible feeling of a holiday, childhood, miracle. Thirty clowns who play with you. They are not showing an idea, they are interested in a person - and me, and a sick child, and a grandmother on the street, a janitor, a saleswoman in a store. It was in St. Petersburg that I first came to an orphanage. It was 1991. My English, of course, was not enough for free communication, and I went to the courses.

Why did Ilya go to English courses?
- He was going to leave. Ilya had a visa with which he could go to America as a refugee. The reason was that he was once not admitted to Moscow State University. He was seriously considering leaving. Not that he packed his bags, but he was leaning towards that. And I went to learn English.

Ilya Segalovich said that he did not enter Moscow State University, as did his classmate and future Yandex partner Arkady Volozh, although both had gold medals for graduating from a physics and mathematics school: “We didn’t really know then that we were Jews.” What was his attitude towards his nationality?
- His mother is Russian, and his father is Jewish. When he had to get a passport at the age of 16, many advised him to write "Russian". But he said: “No, I understood for sure that I am Segalovich, I am not going to change my surname and pretend that I have no Jewish blood in me. If so, then so be it. "

Was there an interest in language and culture?
- Yes, he studied Hebrew, probably for a year. He had a favorite notebook, according to which he tried to study with us. You can say we had home courses. I also have Jewish roots, my maternal grandfather was Jewish. So our whole family enjoyed teaching, especially when we went to Israel.

But he met you and did not leave?
- It turns out like this. They still came back to the thought of leaving, but before Yandex, and then, of course, there was no talk of it. Yandex occupied him completely. He helped our studio financially, and he wanted to deal with the children, but he could not always. Sometimes he came for several hours. He tried to be at all our important events: at exhibition openings, on trips to orphanages and hospitals, or in summer camps when he was on vacation. But in everyday life it was impossible, he was overloaded.

Some people wonder: why should a person on the list of the richest Russian entrepreneurs according to Forbes need charity?
- Well, he did not immediately make it to the Forbes list! When we got married, the eight of us lived in a tiny two-room apartment in Kuchino: my three daughters, our little daughter Asya, foster children ... And sometimes American volunteers from Patch's team slept on the floor.

The water was turned off in the apartment for the whole summer, and one day Ilyusha's father, seeing me washing a mountain of children's clothes, said that he would buy us a washing machine. It was just happiness! And Ilya went to the orphanage back in 1984, played with the children, helped organize the holidays. Then we went together to the most incredible places. Once they painted a wall in a women's colony.

Why did you start working with children?
- When I was ten years old, I was admitted to the hospital for a whole month. A little girl was lying in the hallway next to my room, crying. It turned out that she was an orphanage, she was given mustard plasters, and then the paper was removed, and the mustard remained on the skin, and she was in pain. I tried to find the adults from the nursing staff, but I could not, washed off the mustard myself. The girl's name was Oksana, she was three years old, and we became very friends. And then in the hospital I realized that I wanted to work with children. I had a small studio there, where I painted with Oksana and other young children. Mom brought me pencils and notebooks, because I always drew, since childhood.

How did the studio come about?
- After the 9th grade, I left school and entered the theater and art school, there once every four years there was a recruitment for the department of "doll artist", it was interesting to me. And then I realized that I had met my own: for the first time I felt that I was not some strange white crow. I found myself in my own environment, it was a turning point in my life. After college, I first worked for a short time at the Balashikha puppet theater. And then it turned out that the studio I went to as a child was looking for a teacher. And I went there. This is how my studio "Maria's Children" began.

Why are there mainly children from special schools in your studio now?
- I have never dealt with children from boarding schools, which are usually referred to as "the norm": they have many opportunities, they go to a mass school, attend studios, at least in Moscow. And when a child with developmental disabilities is left “without parental care,” he goes to special boarding schools.

I will not name the diagnoses, I am not a doctor, but there are boarding schools for children with mental retardation, and there are for children with mental retardation. These children are usually found to be incapacitated. They cannot, for example, draw a still life for a long time - next time they are unlikely to remember that they drew it - but they can, for example, quite successfully mold a kitten or paint a candlestick. Any, even a little development in each lesson is important for them. There are very different children in these groups, but since there is a chance for their development, and it is different from zero, I think it's a pity to miss it.

I remember Segalovich's reaction to the "law of Dima Yakovlev": "They, in a fury, decided to cripple other people's children, with whom life had already been very cruel." How has this law influenced your studio?
- Very badly influenced. Programs connected with abroad ceased to exist, and not only ours. For example, in one boarding school, with which we have been working for many years, there was a program of trips for children to Sweden. The Swedes took children for 24 days of their vacation, they were supported by the Tretyak Foundation, and, in my opinion, the queen or the state gave them a small grant, the families were not rich. After the adoption of this law, children no longer travel to Sweden, because living with foreign families is prohibited. Another program we came up with with my Italian friend. We issued official invitations for children, Italian parents received confirmation from the administration of their city "with a gold seal" that they were normal people and that they could be entrusted with their children. This also stopped. We had a planned trip, the children were expected in families, but we were able to take only graduates. Parents who were waiting for the little ones cried, because they already treated them like relatives. It was heartbreaking. We also go to the Shakespeare Festival every year. The second part of this trip was in London, where families - by the way, Russian families - took children. And now this is also impossible. This is very disappointing, but we want children to socialize so that they have everyday skills. If we had a lot of families here who took children from a psycho-neurological boarding school for at least a week, if not for 24 days, like the Swedes, it would be great too. But there are very few of them.

Does the studio have enough money?
- I have money thanks to Ilyusha, I still have Yandex shares. At Maria's Children studio, I spend my personal money on trips abroad. For example, we take caregivers from boarding schools to different countries, they come back with new ideas for classes with children. The trips for teachers from Beslan to Israel, where there is experience in the rehabilitation of victims of terrorist attacks, were very useful. In general, in Israel we are always welcomed, once even the Israeli Ministry of Education helped organize everything. Once they wanted to bring the children - it didn't work out. The Department of Education did not let go, they said: "Do you want to take them to the Passover?" It was spring break.

How did the program with Beslan children come about and how does it work now?
- We decided to go and do what we can: paint walls and conduct clown master classes with children. In the first year, we were told that now is mourning and we must wait. And then everything worked out, they loved us there. We came with boarding school graduates, for whom it is incredible luck to do something important and meaningful. It turned out well for everyone: for our graduates, for teachers and for children, to whom we brought foreign clowns and other incredibly interesting people. Then we began to take Beslan children to our camps, where there are children with neuropsychiatric diagnoses, and gradually they turned from victims into helpers. The former hostages, and now our volunteers - Vika Katsoeva and Kambolat Baev - learned that there is a neuropsychiatric boarding school in the village in the mountains, and agreed that we would come there. We brought clowns, barbecue. There was a big table and a big concert, the children showed what they can do, the clowns played with them. This is Vika and Kambolat invented and made themselves, and this is the most dear to me.

Many of your graduates come to work with children and become volunteers. Have you set yourself such a goal?
- There is such a dream. But I remind myself and all employees that there is no need to cultivate any expectations. It's right not to expect anything, otherwise there will be frustration and burnout. When this suddenly happens, as with Vika and Kambolat, this is a gift! Most often it happens by itself: people begin to notice what is happening around them and try to make life better.

Daria Ryzhkova

For almost twenty years, the Art Center "Maria's Children" has been successfully working with children from correctional boarding schools and orphanages for children with mental retardation. Yulia Loseva, Program Coordinator of the Center, talks about how art therapy changes the lives of special children and why even successful organizations need to develop and learn to change themselves.

"The main thing is that the child likes to create"

The center was created by the artist Maria Eliseeva... In 1993 she started working with a group of children from the boarding school. The organization did not yet exist. There were Maria, several of her friends and children. Then they realized that they needed to register the organization, and in 1997 the Art Center “Maria's Children” was created. The right hand, the main assistant and initially our only donor was Maria's husband, one of the founders of Yandex, who, to our regret, died in 2013.

Gradually, it all grew into a rather large organization. Now we have about 200 children from six or seven boarding schools with which we cooperate, during a year. These are correctional boarding schools and orphanages for children with mental retardation.

Over the years, many of our students have grown up, and some of them ended up in adult neuropsychiatric boarding schools (PNI). Whenever possible, we try to track their fate, keep in touch with them and take them to class.

- What are the main directions of the center's work?

Maria is an artist, so it all started with painting. But ceramics quickly appeared, then needlework (patchwork, felting, tapestry and other types), as well as music (children learn simple melodies on the piano, guitar, sing). In addition, children learn to cook. It turns out that, on average, a child comes to our class once a week.

We are trying to expand the range of activities for children. For example, at Maria's dacha a workshop was built - it was their dream with Ilya. A potter conducts classes there, who teaches children to work on a potter's wheel, and now the children regularly go there and practice. In the Moscow studio, we do not have the technical ability to do this. And there they do work that requires a lot of space - a mosaic, for example. It's great and interesting. These are some completely new sensations and new opportunities for children to learn something. We have no goal to grow professional artists out of them. After all, many seriously ill children with developmental delays come to us, and we do not expect any special results from them. The main thing is that the child likes to create, that he does it with pleasure, and not as important as he does.

But if a child's abilities open up and he wants to master it professionally, to achieve something, we contribute to this in every possible way - we help to find an educational institution, pay for college education.

We also have a large program - the organization of winter and summer camps for children. There are many more different types of art activities in the camp, in addition, we stage performances, go in for sports.

Several years ago we started a program with the First School of the city of Beslan. Since 2007, we go there once a year, our staff and volunteers conduct master classes for the entire school, together with the children we painted the walls. And several times we brought children from there to our summer or winter camp. Children who came to us in 2007 graduated from school this year and for the second year they come to our camp as volunteers.

Dima Yakovlev's Law and Shakespeare Festival

- Your center is also engaged in teaching children foreign languages. Please tell us about it.

According to the school curriculum, our children do not study foreign languages \u200b\u200bat all, because such a subject is not provided in correctional schools. And many have a great motivation to learn the language - they sometimes go abroad, come into contact with foreigners, they want to talk. And some have good abilities. Now we have two main languages \u200b\u200b- English and Italian, because we have travel programs to Italy and England. Classes are taught by volunteers, individually or in small groups, most often coming to the boarding school itself.

Unfortunately, now, after the adoption of the so-called “Dima Yakovlev's law,” it has become more and more difficult to take children abroad, even on educational trips. This law struck not only on adoption - it is generally forbidden to take orphans abroad if they live there with a family. And before our children lived in Italian families for a month in the summer. The number of these families increased every year. It was a colossal experience for children, and, surprisingly, for some reason it was very attractive for Italians, they even created their own public organization Friends of the Children of Mary, together with us and the teachers of the boarding school, they very carefully selected which child family is more suitable. They are not some rich people - the Italian province, the most ordinary families with average incomes, but they were ready to make efforts to occupy, develop and entertain the child, to take care of him. The guys, when they came from there, of course, chatted in Italian, then called back with their families, corresponded.

But now the children were not allowed to be taken to Italy. Therefore, for the last two years we have been going there only with the graduates of the boarding school who have already reached the age of majority.

At the same time when the "law of Dima Yakovlev" was adopted, a decree was issued stating that there should not be any programs with living in families. Only a camp or hotel. We take our children to England - to the Shakespeare Festival. Our children rehearse a play throughout the year, something from Shakespeare, and in April they go to Stratford-upon-Avon, where a festival of theater groups from all over the world is held on the playwright's birthday. We have been traveling for five years now, playing a performance at the festival and spending several days visiting local museums and even painting in the city in the open air. There we live in a hotel, and the Department of Social Security allows us these trips. This is also an amazing experience for children - to visit England and take part in the festival, it expands the horizons of the children’s consciousness, their idea of \u200b\u200bthe world.

The 4th boarding school, with which we cooperate, had a program of trips to Sweden with the support of the Vladislav Tretyak Foundation, and the Swedes adopted several children. Moreover, such a goal was not even set - adoption. It's just that the children had the opportunity to live in a family in Sweden in the summer, for several years in a row they went to the same family, really became akin to the host families.

We participated in this program - for two years in a row we conducted seminars for host families with the participation of a psychologist. This program also ceased to exist after the adoption of the "law of Dima Yakovlev", and even Tretyak could not do anything.

"We need serious transformations"

Your organization has participated in the Points of Growth program of the British Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) aimed at professional development and financial strengthening of NGOs in Russia. What tasks did you set for yourself when you joined the program?

When CAF offered such a development grant, we realized that we needed a lot, but it turns out that nothing is more difficult than changing ourselves.

We decided that we definitely need to make a new site. The site that we had was made by a volunteer a few years ago. Of course, it is great that we have such volunteers, and we are very grateful to them. But there was no design on the site as such, technically and morally it was outdated, and as a result we made a new portal. There, among other things, there is an online store in which we offer our souvenirs - both children's works themselves (paintings, ceramic crafts), and various printed materials with drawings of children (postcards, magnets, calendars), which we have been successfully doing for a long time and we sell. We have been doing this since the 1990s, and before that, mostly souvenirs were sold at fairs or were simply given to our various friends and donors. But we understand that the audience of our products can be much wider than at the fair, and we hope that our popularity and income will increase significantly through the online store.

That is, we made a new site practically from scratch - it is now on a different platform, with a different design, with an improved structure.

- Would you like to take part in this kind of program again?

We need a bigger redesign because the site is a wrapper and reflection and needs a reorganization. We planned that we would involve specialists for consultations, so that someone would look at our situation from the outside and suggest how to improve the administrative structure.

The fact is that we now have two organizations with one Maria at the head. It so happened that "Children of Mary" have the legal form of a public organization, and this imposed rather large restrictions on what we can do. And at some point CAF advised us to open a charitable foundation. Then we registered the second organization - the Pelican charity foundation. At Pelican, we now have social educators who provide individual support for children and graduates, and we want to expand this area of \u200b\u200bwork. But it is difficult to structure activities in one organization, and even more so in two ... Therefore, we need advice from outside.

Organizational consulting is not the only cost. The legal side is important: how to register everything correctly, draw up documents. Here you cannot do without specialists.

In general, it is very correct that CAF gives money for development, because it is easier to find money for programs for children. When you say that we want, for example, to hold a winter camp, it is not so difficult to find funds for this, since it is clear to all people - both an ordinary man in the street and any donor.

But as for the need for funds for a new website, especially for administrative transformations in the organization, this is often perceived ambiguously, and it is not easy to find money for this. Therefore, CAF leaders are great fellows, they are concerned with the development of our NGOs and find funds for this. And, of course, we are grateful to JP Morgan for funding such a program.

We ourselves would be looking for some kind of volunteer help again. And when these funds are available, it becomes possible to attract much more qualified specialists, there is a choice.

"We cannot say that everything is fine with financing, because we do not know what will happen tomorrow."

- Do you have problems with funding and with sponsors?

We are successfully coping and we hope that this will continue, but this is achieved at the cost of quite a lot of effort, search, and we cannot stop. There is no such thing that we can sit back with confidence that we already have funds for the future. We are constantly looking for, attracting new people. The situation in the country is now alarming, and one cannot count on anything. You cannot count on one donor, not even one group of donors. It is not clear which of them will stay here at all if the political situation becomes more tense. Everything is too unpredictable.

We are trying to receive funds from the state - we apply for grants to the Moscow Public Relations Committee, the Tver Administration sometimes gives us funds. But with the state, everything is also unpredictable. You don't know at all what law will be released tomorrow, and how it will change the situation.

Basically, foreign corporations have a habit of spending money on charity. But in the context of the embargo and deteriorating international relations, there is a possibility that many companies will leave Russia. Including their charitable programs will go away.

There are not so many Russian companies who are ready for permanent cooperation. And, as a rule, Russian companies donate that much money. We just haven't had time to develop a culture of charity.

Therefore, it is impossible to say today that we are doing well with financing, since we do not know what will happen tomorrow.

"We immediately say that we are out of politics"

- How do you interact with government agencies?

We have received grants from the Moscow Public Relations Committee more than once, and we hope we will receive more.

In addition, we cooperate with the local government of the Tverskoy district of Moscow. We have from them premises for free use for leisure work with the population. Sometimes they finance our events, but now it has been greatly reduced. About three years ago it was regular, and now it is episodic.

But any cooperation with the state is a double-edged sword. Of course, we understand that free space in the center of Moscow is a lot, but for this we sometimes have to take part in some events at the request of the council. We flatly refuse to participate in political actions, although sometimes we are asked to do so. For example, recently they asked to sign subscription lists for some deputies before the elections to the Moscow City Duma. But we refuse this and immediately say that we are out of politics.

But if there is an exhibition of artwork or Maslenitsa in the park, we will be happy to take part.

What advice on professional development would you give to your colleagues from other NGOs dealing with orphan issues? What would you warn against? What would you suggest focusing on?

I came to the conclusion that all programs aimed at further development take much longer than it initially seems. It turns out that the site is not completed in three months, but much longer. And the online store too. This takes more time and effort than it seems at first. Therefore, my advice is to calculate your strength. Although they are difficult to calculate until you get involved in it. Apparently, the main thing is not to be afraid to change.

This interview is in a series of conversations with representatives of NGOs who received support under the Growth Points program.

Growth Points is a comprehensive CAF program that has existed since 2009 and is aimed at supporting the organizational development of NGOs. In 2012-2015, it is being implemented with the co-financing of the EU, the C.S. Mott and the JP Morgan Philanthropy Foundation. Non-profit organizations participate in educational seminars, use the consulting support of CAF Russia specialists and receive funding for the implementation of their projects. The main condition of the program is that NGOs cannot spend the funds received to work with end beneficiaries: all the money must be used for their own development and strengthening in order to become more sustainable and in the future to be able to better and more effectively help their target groups.

In 2013-2014. Within the framework of the Growth Points program, 22 NGOs from different regions have implemented their concepts of organizational development and achieving financial sustainability, developed within the framework of the program.