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Oct 5, 2010
The farewell ceremony for participants of the "Train of Hopу" program leaving for Kaliningrad took place on October 5 at the Belorussky Train Station in Moscow. After the official part of the ceremony, which was attended by honored guests, the future parents left on a modern Aeroexpress train for Sheremetyevo Airport, where they were to board a plane to Kaliningrad.
Aeroexpress is a partner of the “Train of Hope”, a Russian-wide charity program, for the third time. This event is conducted as part of the “Children’s Question” social project by GRK Russian Radio together with the “Open Your Wings!” Charity Fund and JSC Aeroflot – Russian Airlines.
The “Train of Hope” organizes meetings between potential adoptive parents and guardians with children who have been left without parental custody. This charity event is being held for the 12th time in 5 years. The event participants have been to the Russian cities of Orel, Kostroma, Ryazan, Ivanov, Pskov, Volgograd, Vologda, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Ekaterinburg. The future adoptive parents left each one of these cities as real parents, with their adopted children.
The current trip is totally unique. The future parents aren’t going to adopt little children, but rather grown-up children: those who have minimal chances of being adopted otherwise. The experience of previous trips shows that the majority of candidates look for children who haven’t yet reached three years of age. The older the child, the harder it is to find him or her a family. Especially if he or she has brothers or sisters. This event’s organizers give “grown-up” children the chance to get parents too though.
Guests and organizers of the charity event spoke at the farewell ceremony, and wished the future parents good luck and composure when making this anything but simple journey. The speakers included:
• Eduard Uspensky – Famous children’s poet and writer,
• Vyacheslav Umanovsky – General Director of GRK Russian Radio,
• Vladimir Bushuev – Head of the Executive Personnel of JSC RZD,
• Inna Zotova – author and editor of the “Children’s Question” program,
• Vadim Semikin – Public Relations Director of LLC Aeroexpress.
Families which already adopted children on previous “Train of Hope” trips came to the ceremony to say goodbye to the future parents, to share their own experience, and to wish the future parents luck. These include the Zhgushkin family with their children Roman and Polina, and the Smirnov family with their sons Andrey and Ivan. These families speak louder than any words about the need to conduct the “Train of Hope” program: it’s enough to look at the carefree children and their happy parents!
Only 5 families are taking part in this “Train of Hope”, which is not as many families as on previous occasions. This is due to the fact that few families are ready to take on the responsibility of adopting adult children rather than little kids. That said, the event organizers expect that the families taking part in this trip will be just the “first robins”, and that their example will show many other future adoptive parents that to adopt a child older than 5 years old is not just enormous responsibility, but also great happiness! One can say that the “Train of Hope” event has reached a new, more serious level, having taken on such a difficult task as helping parents to adopt children who are already going to school.
Parents from Omsk, Karelia, Zelenograd, and the Stavropol Krai will visit several orphanages, and may find their “own” child in one of them. We are waiting impatiently for their return to Moscow, and we hope that the young passengers, the daughters and sons of the program participants, will sit in the red Aeroexpress train on October 10th together with the adults!