Red Cross Soup Kitchens in Southern Siberia Provide Food and Jobs

Eleven-year-old Lena is one of a group of eight disadvantaged children sitting down to lunch at the Donmasuk cafe in Kyzyl, capital of Siberia's Tuva republic. It's a basic but healthy meal of soup and bread, sausage and pasta, washed down with a fruit drink.

She and the others attend Kyzyl's School Number 14, for "socially difficult" children, as their teacher Klaudia Churutas puts it. "Sasha has only his grandmother," Klaudia says. "His mother abandoned him and doesn't provide any support; another mother drinks but loves her children anyway; then there's a woman who works full-time as a cleaner but earns only 230 rubles (8 U.S. dollars) a month--how can she cope?" adds Klaudia, explaining just what vulnerability means in post-Soviet Kyzyl. "There was never any unemployment here. If anything it was the opposite, people who perhaps didn't want to work were pressured into it."

Now the local Red Cross, using Federation appeal funds, is trying to make a dent in both problems. It has contracted out a soup kitchen service to the Kyzyl Disability Society, which in turn employs 20 people to run the soup kitchen at the Donmasuk cafe. The name means 'warm water' in the Tuva language.

"We're very grateful to the International Federation for this support," says Ludmila Fedorova, director of the Disability Society. "This building was seriously dilapidated when we took it over; in fact it hadn't been touched for 20 years," she says. Now the society feeds about 100 vulnerable people a day and employs 20, many of them disabled.

"Things aren't getting any easier though," Fedorova says. "The price of meat is going up since high unemployment means cattle are being killed rather than properly bred."

"This area used to export reindeer meat to France," she says, but now Tuva's hunting and fishing industries have all but collapsed. "People have no money to buy the produce."

It's a story you hear over and over again in this part of Siberia--the subsidized industry and agriculture of the Soviet era have vanished but have not been replaced even by small-scale private enterprise. Still less the 'rampant capitalism' of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Kyzyl is littered with abandoned factories and a broken, rusting plant. The result is an unemployment majority and all its attendant social evils--primarily alcoholism.

Nowhere is the deadly spiral of economic decline, unemployment, Alcoholism, and destitution more evident than at Kyzyl's orphanage, for which Tuva republic branch chairwoman Irina Ondar is designing a support program under the Federation's winter appeal.

Thirteen-year-old Amak Targut was admitted to the home after his mother died; his father--a "hopeless alcoholic," according to staff--was unable to look after him. His six brothers and sisters are all adults. He ran away from the orphanage recently but was found and brought back. Now he shows off his drawing skills to Red Cross visitors in the medical center where he's getting a check-up. No one has any idea where he was for the two weeks he was missing.

Kyzyl's orphanage is obviously a well-run institution, with good classrooms and dormitories for its 320 children, and an excellent kitchen. But its budget is shrinking year by year. This year the school asked for 14 million rubles but will be lucky if it gets 5 million. It's had no new furniture for 35 years, says one teacher.

The Federation project Ondar is working on will help a little--$10 per child per month, up to a maximum of $7,000. The school can decide how the money is to be spent.

Most of the children, however, are not actually orphans. "Because of alcohol a lot of parents just reject their kids, throw them out," says Tatiana Terekhova, the deputy director.

"There's also a significant amount of migration now from region to region because of unemployment," adds Rima Shelepova, a school inspector. Many parents just leave their children behind.

One of the orphanage's many problems is the damage wrought by a hurricane that hit Tuva last year. Behind its main building lies a ruined greenhouse; many windows were lost, soaking up yet more precious rubles; a chimney collapsed and they had no electricity for two weeks. Building maintenance is not included in the Federation appeal, but the Red Cross money will free up school funds for sorely-needed repair work.

In the new Russia private firms sometimes do work in social institutions in lieu of paying taxes. "I've seen one orphanage which had a brand new marble floor but was otherwise falling down," said Federation Relief Coordinator Geoff Miles after touring Gizil. "We just hope Gizil gets the money it needs to keep going, from whichever source," he adds.