Children are placed in institutions for a variety of reasons including abandonment, abuse and neglect, and disabilities that parents feel they cannot support. Institutions stunt all areas of human development: physical, mental, social and emotional.

Today, 800,000 children in Russia are wards of the state. Many of them live in large institutions. The results of a childhood spent inside an orphanage are frightening:*

Firefly gives leaders the tools they need to keep children out of orphanages. Firefly works to ensure that children live in families, not institutions, by:

• Disseminating best practices in child welfare reform
• Training care providers, community leaders, families and government officials on topics from direct intervention to policy reform
• Connecting Russian professionals with their western peers to share information and experience
• Providing technical assistance in areas such as program implementation and evaluation 

*See http://www.rusk.ru/st.php?idar=21986 and http://sirotinka.ru/ravnovesie/63.html; statistics from the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation.