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‘Child by child,’ group aids homeless street kids

The Russian government estimates about two million Russian children are homeless

July 2, 2001
Web posted at: 4:45 PM EDT (2045 GMT)

From Steve Harrigan
CNN

PERM, Russia (CNN) Five years ago, Christina Greenberg and a small group of volunteers mailed a package of supplies to help homeless and orphaned in the city of Perm in western Russia.

At that time, they had no idea their efforts would grow to eventually help hundreds of children find warmth, food, clothing, counseling and schooling with a daycare center, an all-night shelter and a street outreach program.

With little resources, and little idea how many children desperately needed help, the small offshoot of Love’s Bridge, a charity founded by Americans in Moscow in 1995, launched in Perm in 1996. The volunteers slowly began making a difference, child by child, Greenberg said.

Greenberg rented an apartment in Perm with her own money, plus a few thousand dollars through corporate sponsors, and opened a shelter. The city offered some help by providing transportation.

Dozens of children were living on the streets, with little food or clothing, and suffering from abuse. Some had been stabbed several times or viciously attacked. Of 14 children who lived at the shelter at one time, 13 had tried to commit suicide.

"When we first came, they had not been inside in so long — like, they had not eaten anything," Greenberg said. "And they came to our center like animals. There is no other word for it."

There may be two million homeless children in Russia, the government says. There may be four million. No one knows for sure. In Perm, as in many Russian cities, it’s a problem often left untouched by the local authorities.

The start of something

Volunteers feed one of Perm’s homeless children

"We came to Perm, we asked the administration, ‘Is there anyone here helping out?’ And they said ‘No, there is no one,’" Greenberg said. She was determined to help, to keep the children from dying or going to prison, but she encountered opposition from local authorities.

"One of the first times we were feeding them in the market, the police just stomp in and started yelling, yelling at us: ‘How dare you feed these kids? Who do you think you are? They are just rats. They are just criminals. Why would anyone want to feed them?’"

Greenberg and the other volunteers continued feeding the children once a week, but they had yet to discover the magnitude of the problem.

"We would serve them food," Greenberg told CNN. "And we started seeing how many there really were. They would come with their wounds. You know, nobody would let them into the hospital. So they would be in pain.

Greenberg remains compelled to help the children, although the group eventually hopes to turn the program over to Russian staff.

"I have felt that God has led me to these kids," Greenberg said. "But I felt, once I started working with them, I couldn’t just leave them on the streets, because I knew if we didn’t do something, nobody would. So it was basically a question between life and death, you know. Every kid that moves on, we save a life."

Hope for the future

Society’s attitudes toward the children have improved in the last five years, Greenberg said, with local people volunteering to help and the government opening a night shelter for children with nowhere to sleep.

"So there has been progress, you know, leaps and bounds of progress in that area," she told CNN. "That was one of our main goals, was to raise the awareness of the problem among the government and just among the average person. And we’ve definitely seen a very big difference."

U.S. woman working to save Siberian street children

May 21, 2001 Posted: 12:14 PM EDT (1614 GMT)
      
By Steve Harrigan
CNN Correspondent

PERM, Russia (CNN) — There are always some details and impressions that, for a lot of different reasons including limited airtime, don’t make it into a report that goes on the air.

In the case of Siberian street children, some of what was left out, for me, might be as important as what went into the report.

If you watch Christina Greenberg, an American, do her work with homeless children from the Russian city of Perm, on six hours of videotape, you will never hear her raise her voice or lose her temper. And despite her small, thin frame, she exercises a remarkable authority over some of the wildest children in the country.
 
One detail that did not make it into the report concerned Christina’s battles with the local police.

Christina said the children were sometimes beaten by local police, who would break their fingers or hands in the marketplace. On such occasions, she said, she would go down to the police station and "yell and fight for the children, and demand an explanation as to why they had been touched."

Arguing in another language

At this moment, her small frame becomes animated. Anyone who has lived in a country where they speak another language knows how difficult and frustrating it can be to argue in a different language.

To go into a provincial Russian police station as an American and make such charges on behalf of street children takes a lot of courage. I realized that when I looked at her frame, shaking with anger. Here is a person, I thought, determined to do what she thinks is right, whatever the personal cost.

The second point is broader. Christina says the problem is not that Russians do not care about the homeless children, but that the issue is something new for Russia, that it did not exist under the social safety net in the old Soviet Union.

Needs formerly met by the state

She hopes someday to turn the operation over to a Russian staff. The creation of private charity or social welfare groups is not an easy sell in a nation where such needs were taken care of by the state up until just a decade ago, especially once you get outside the capital Moscow, where Western influence and presence is strongest.

It is partly for that reason that Christina says she chose Perm, because it is "the coldest, most forbidding place" that came to mind.

The third point may not matter to anyone but myself. This is a story I think challenges you to think.

Initially, when I saw the children jumping in front of the camera, putting their hands on the lens, my reaction was not altogether different from merchants at the market: Don’t touch the camera, stop getting in the way.

Reasons for bad behavior

I felt a little bit annoyed. The point Christina makes with the child whom she admits to regarding as a "demon" initially is this: There is a reason why he acts that way.

Hence, there is a reason why everyone acts the way they do. It may be understanding that gives her the patience and endurance to keep going. It must be a deep understanding.

Finally, a common mistake is to give the reporter all the credit for doing the story, since it is his or her voice on the report.

In this case CNN Moscow Cameraman/Producer John Kluver deserves the lion’s share of the credit. Working as a one-man photographer/technician to keep costs low, John Kluver spent several days in Perm hunting for the children alongside the charity workers.

It was his idea, his artistry, his shooting, editing and production skills that made the report happen.

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