# Gifts4Orphans — About

## Our story

In the summer of 2018, Anthony and his brother Andrew were visiting their
grandparents in Kazakhstan. Across from the house was a yard, and in the yard
were children. A young boy called out through the fence to their mother.

That fence was the edge of a local orphanage caring for about 30 children
between six months and three years old. The family visited several times that
summer, and could not leave it there.

Back home in Georgia, Andrew organised a fundraiser through his school's Beta
Club with his friend Greg Steckel. Katherine, Greg's sister, and Anthony
recruited volunteers from their middle schools. Together they collected a huge
amount of toys and sent six big boxes of gently used toys to the children.

The next year the effort spread across Atlanta's Russian-speaking communities,
churches and schools, and the team grew to nine. In 2019 the four cofounders
registered Gifts4Orphans as a Georgia nonprofit charity organization.

In 2020 we began supporting an orphanage in Moscow as well. By 2022, with Andrew
and Greg away at college, Anthony became President and recruited new members.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in March 2022, we partnered with the Ukrainian
Congress Committee of America, Georgia Branch, to support Ukrainian children,
while continuing our work in Kazakhstan.

Over time we shifted from shipping physical donations to raising money, which
goes much further. Our volunteer in Kazakhstan, Max, oversees how every dollar
is spent — on food, medication and diapers, and on projects like new carpets and
an accessibility ramp at the orphanage.

## The Shchuchinsk Babyhouse

The babyhouse was established in 1946, just after the Second World War, with
three children. In 1979 it moved into a new building with room for 50. Over more
than seventy years it has cared for approximately 2,400 children.

Today 37 babies live there, from birth to age three. Children with complex
medical needs stay until they are four.

Not every child there is an orphan. The "Nadezhda" — Hope — program places
seriously ill children whose parents cannot care for them at home. Other
children have parents whose parental rights were revoked.

Most of the children have significant health challenges. The conditions are
genuinely good: individual wooden beds, toys, and intensive care facilities, with
86 staff members looking after them. It is far better than the alternatives.

But it can never replace home.