Friends of Russian Orphans - Supporting Yaroslavl's children

A nonprofit organization for the support of Russian orphans

FRO USA merging with Russian Children's Welfare Society!

November 15, 2007: On January 1, 2008, Friends of Russian Orphans in the United States (FRO USA) will join forces with the Russian Children's Welfare Society (RCWS), a long-established (since 1926) nonprofit organization based in New York City that has the same mission and a great deal of experience providing substantial aid to Russian children in crisis.

RCWS concentrates most of its efforts on enhancing the lives of children at risk in Russia by funding:

Medical care and training of Russian doctors
Orphanages and homeless shelters
Rehabilitation centers for the disabled or mentally challenged
Educational scholarships
A major New Year's party in Moscow for over 2,000 disadvantaged children

For the past two years RCWS has underwritten the university scholarship portion of the FRO Yaroslavl Education Program and will continue to expand this program in the future.

FRO's mission will continue

RCWS operates from a solid financial foundation ($7M) with excellent leadership, staff, and an experienced, dedicated Board of Directors, of which FRO USA president Sam Harding recently became a member.

In 2006, RCWS distributed $634,000 in grants to programs in Russia. FRO's assets brought to RCWS will be dedicated to use in Yaroslavl at Sam's discretion. He will serve on the Board's Program Committee with special concentration on higher education for orphans and will work in Russia to increase RCWS scholarship opportunities for orphans.

This merger allows Sam and Betsey Harding to spread the FRO experience of effective model building to other parts of Russia. It is an excellent match.

Even though FRO USA is dissolving, the FRO organization in Yaroslavl will continue. As we have described over the past several years on this website, our partner organization in Russia has been in the process of taking ownership of the efforts initiated by FRO. A new structure for FRO Yaroslavl has formed, and we are excited to see how our friends in Russia continue the mission of helping the orphans in their city.

If you would like to contact us regarding our organization and/or our merger with RCWS, please feel free to contact us by writing to main@rcws.org, the main email address for RCWS.

Thank you!

We are very proud of our achievements in FRO's short history, and we are grateful and humbled by the tremendous support given to this venture by you, our many generous donors. Thanks to your help, orphans in Yaroslavl are living in better conditions and are facing the future with higher hopes than they could ever have imagined only a few years ago. On behalf of everyone at FRO USA and FRO Yaroslavl, thank you!

Of course, we encourage you to continue your generous ways by giving to the Russian Children's Welfare Society. Please visit their website at http://www.rcws.org.