New Years With Old Friends

This year HOPE worldwide – Russia organized cheerful New Years events and the distribution of groceries and gifts for seniors and WWII veterans in Moscow.

“It is so great to see that years of caring about lonely grandmothers and grandfathers really makes a difference in their lives! It is great to see their happy faces, hear their kind words full of gratitude and to feel the warmth of their hearts - hearts that are not lonely any more!” –
HOPE volunteer.

Though these people are in difficult situations in their lives, each of them brought delicious food for the New Years Celebration to the Old Friends’ Home. Some of our veterans even prepared a performance: songs, poetry and blessings for the New Year! And the table was filled with a variety of yummy food! It was a great Holiday and everybody was sincerely happy. Veterans sang many songs and shared about all of their news from the previous year and participated in a quiz competition that the HOPE staff had prepared for them.

“Why don’t we call Santa Claus?” we thought. So we called him… It was so great to see how our old friends were so encouraged to receive a gift and how they still wanted to take a picture with Santa. Afterwards, everybody started dancing without thinking about their physical problems or illnesses. Once, long ago, these veterans came to the Old Friends’ Home with sad faces, but no more! Now they are not strangers to each other and not lonely any more. Now they are a community of friends!

In the end, everyone thanked us for this program. “Don’t leave us”, - some people said. And another told us: “You can’t imagine what a great thing you are doing for us and how it’s important for us to know that somebody needs us”.

We would like to readdress these words to everyone who reads this article! Everyone needs a friend irrespective of age and social level. You also can help and become a friend for somebody!

Many thanks to our partners for their long-term support of our Old Friends’ Home program. To Burtsev Mikhail Mikhailovich, Head of the Marfino City Council; Serova Lyubov Borisovna, Social Assistant to the Head of Marfino City Council; The «IKSS» group of companies and specifically Zaborin Aleksandr. Thanks to them, we were able to help 100 pensioners in the Marfino District this December. In addition to the parties, 1 in every 25 people in the Marfino District receives groceries monthly from HOPE. Also, 30 lonely seniors are provided with hot meals daily in the Mosfilm District.

May 2009 bring you as much warmth and care as your support has given to these needy friends!