A family-type children's home will open in the Rossony district

The first family-type children's home planned in the Vitebsk region this year has been opened in the agro-town of Klyastitsy, Rossony district. The housewarming will take place in November; currently, landscaping is underway, and issues related to furnishing and purchasing household appliances are being resolved, the Education Department of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee informed a BELTA correspondent.

The house will be inhabited by the family of Anna and Anatoly Kotov. This couple was among the first in the district to decide to take in orphaned children. And all their foster children, having grown up, continue to visit Anna and Anatoly and maintain contact with them. Currently, the couple is raising their biological daughter Vera (their elder son lives separately with his family) and four foster children: schoolchildren Roman, Igor, Daria, and the youngest, Yulia.

The standard family-type children's home, consisting of five rooms and a kitchen, was built with funds from OJSC "ASB Belarusbank," which initiated and is implementing the "Bat'koŭski kut" program for the construction of such facilities. In addition, last year, construction of four more family-type children's homes began in the Vitebsk region, two of which are being built with state capital investments – in Rossony itself and in Sharkovshchina.

The facility in Rossony is 95% complete, with over Br1.6 billion of the planned Br2.1 billion having been utilized (financing is almost equally split between the republican and regional budgets). For the construction of the children's home in Sharkovshchina, only Br237 million of the planned Br2.1 billion has been utilized so far. However, as assured by the Education Department, the building will be commissioned this year. As for its interior, which is being purchased with funds from the local budget, it will be completed only in 2015.

Regarding the other two facilities being built with sponsorship funds, the final commissioning date is not yet known, although the construction of both is in the final stages. The house in Orsha is being built by the international charitable foundation "Chernobyl Children's Project," and the house in the agro-town of Mazolovo is being built by several commercial banks.

Currently, 152 children reside in 22 family-type children's homes in the region. Work on implementing children's right to live in a family continues. This year, 77% of newly identified children left without parental care have been placed in families of citizens. A total of 1156 children are being raised in 760 foster families.

Ekaterina Knyazeva