New KIDS and GAP programs!

Mykolaivka Internat recently added two sponsorship programs: GAP (graduate assistance program) and KIDS (kindness is donating smiles).

The KIDS program helps the students who are living at the Internat. Sponsorship is easy. After a student is assigned, you write letters to your child and send two basic packages per year. The children love to receive letters and packages from sponsors. Most importantly, the correspondence lets the children know that they have someone who cares about them. The annual cost for this program is $60.00 per year. This annual fee pays for a birthday party, Christmas celebration and costs for the in-country team.

The GAP program is also a sponsorship program. The sponsor pays $40.00 per month (this can be split between two sponsors) to help the graduate get through trade school. The students use this money for basic living supplies. They also learn how to budget and save for when they graduate and need to live on their own. Letters to the sponsored children are encouraged, packages are optional. Thirty dollars of this money goes to the student, five dollars goes to the in-country team for communications and travel expenses and the remaining five goes to Valentina who heads the program at Myko.

If you are interested in sponsoring a student through the GAP or KIDS program, please contact

Rachael Davidson - mykovocational@yahoo.com for GAP and

Stephanie Crail - Myko_Crail@yahoo.com for KIDS

Knitting project donated

An Orphan Smiles received a donation yesterday from the "Knit One, Purl Two, Pray Three" Sunday morning knitting group from St. John's Lutheran Church in Phoenixville, PA. The small group of knitters gather during the Sunday School hour for knitting and fellowship. They will continue to work on on toys and hats for the orphans. Received were 18 winter hats and 3 adorable knitted toys.

Feed the mind update

Thanks to the generous donations to the Feed the Mind program at Internat Mykolaivka, we have been able to purchase 80 new books for the 2nd Shipment to Myko for $500.00 which included shipping. These books consisted of: The Harry Potter Series, The Golden Compass Series, The Spiderwick Chronicles and various Series of books of Russian / Ukrainian authors - Tanya Grotter (Nancy Drew type) and Golden Dog Series (Zolotoi Pes.)

Thanks to all to bringing us closer to completing the Internat Myko Library..

New Sponsorship program at Myko

An Orphan smiles is pleased to announce that it has launched the KIDS and GAP sponsorship programs at Myko. Both programs have some students available for sponsorship and details can be found on the website or by e-mailing Stephanie for the KIDS program at Myko_Crail@yahoo.com or Rachael for the GAP program at rachaeld@anorphansmiles.org

Collection Effort - Essential Program

An Orphan Smiles would like to recognize St Basil School of Kimberton, PA for their collection effort this past week.
The school thru the Student Council sponsors a 'dress down" day where the students are permitted to wear clothes other than their usual school uniform if they participate in the designated Charitable event. The focus of this service activity was the Orphans in Ukraine and each class was assigned a different item or items to collect.

The results of this collection effort were amazing especially considering that St. Basil is a small school with only one classroom K-8 per grade.

Listed below are the items that were delivered to An Orphan Smiles and will be sent to Kiev Orphanage 12, Tsuripinsk and Mykolaivka in February.

23 boxes of cereal or boxes of granola/cereal bars
17 boxes of bandaids
18 coloring books
26 boxes of crayons
15 Paint by number sets
19 Hair accessories
17 Hair brushes
35 bottles of shampoo/conditioner
24 tubes of toothpaste
64 toothbrushes
11 deoderant
2 sewing kits
130+ bars of soap
4300 Q-tips
8 Facial Scrub products
15 bottles of lotion

Our Essential program focuses on providing hygiene items such as many of the items listed above. We hope to fill out these boxes with toilet paper and feminine products as well. Thanks to those who have already contributed to this worthwhile program to make this possible.

Update on "feed the mind"

We have reached another milestone for the Book Project at Myko. A few days ago we reached the $1000 mark. We are thrilled that we are already a third of the way towards our goal of filling the shelves of the library at Myko.

Please consider a donation towards our "Feed the Mind" Project. A book costs on average $5 and will give every student the opportunity to travel through the pages to places like Hogwarts and Narnia. Details for donating can be found in the "Donate a Smile" section of the website.

Photo's of the Kiev trip

Here is the link for the photo's of the Myko kids trip to Kiev.

http://anorphansmiles1.shutterfly.com/