PROP (Pendill Russian Orphan Program)
PROP has served as a springboard and inspiration for today’s Pendill Fund, Inc. Begun almost ten years ago this program has been helping over 50 disabled orphans annually and will continue as one of PF programs serving the needs of disabled orphaned children. Every year disabled orphans from several orphanages travel for more than 24 hours by train to reach Evpatoria, on the southern shores of Crimea, Ukraine. Once, renowned for its exotic spas and mud baths, this area was the favorite place for Russian nobility to go for its “Cures”.
The children stay in Crimea for 24 days as a rule, but some remain longer, depending on their condition. The sanatorium offers excellent medical and preventive treatment, massage, saline inhalation chambers, mineral and mud baths, and a large variety of other treatments, all geared towards strengthening muscles, bones and improving the general well being of undernourished and often neglected children. Swimming in the Black Sea, five meals a day and sunshine do wonders in four weeks. All children demonstrate definite improvement in their health.
While there, tutors are hired by Pendill Fund to fill the gaps in the children’s education. It is during such summer weeks that PF children have learned a great deal about history and literature and also discovered the magic of computers. PF invites stimulating guest teachers, writers and art historians who have managed to raise the children’s curiosity, captured their imagination and inspired them to excel in their studies. Many of them are so captivated as to ask for additional computer training. Today, some of them are earning their living as a result of this exposure.
During the year, some of the same children come to Moscow and St. Petersburg where with the help of Pendill Fund they are fitted for new prosthetic arms and legs. They are taken for consultation to the best medical professionals both Russian and Western. The children can get help from educational advisors and participate in other Pendill Fund sponsored programs.
Because The Pendill Fund’s board members, staff and volunteers are intensely involved in the children’s lives, in their problems and in their joys, the orphans in our program have begun to thrive, with an 8% enrollment in universities and other institutions of higher education. Thanks to many supporters on both sides of the ocean Pendill Fund children have been given a new lease on life and today many of them are volunteering and trying to help others.
