Kostroma Young Mothers Program

Nadezhda Fund was founded by Children’s HopeChest in 1996. Since then it has been faithfully providing social, psychological, pedagogical, legal and medical support to orphans, children left without parental care, and older orphans/orphanage graduates. The Young Mothers Program was launched in 2004. Since then, over 350 young single mothers have received assistance in Vladimir, Kostroma, Ivanovo, and Ryazan. Currently, the program is implemented by Nadezhda Fund in both the Vladimir and Kostroma regions.

Orphaned girls who have graduated from the orphanage experience challenges because they do not know how to build healthy relationships with the opposite gender after leaving life in the orphanage institution. Often, these girls engage in promiscuous sexual relations which lead to early pregnancy, abortion, or child abandonment.

As research shows, parental attitudes of orphaned pregnant women often lead to the formation of the so-called “secondary orphanhood,” or the refusal to raise their own children. According to data, graduates of the institutional system refuse newborns 20 times more often than women with family education experience. Inadequate, unformed attitudes towards marriage (only 1-in-10 orphanage graduates with a child has a legal marriage), parental status (1-in-4 orphanage graduates does not raise her child), and emotional rejection of the child (indicated by 1-in-3 orphanage graduates) requires the creation a support system. Support offered through the Young Mothers Program teaches young women to form maternal affection for their child, build positive parent-child relationships, and break the vicious cycle of child abandonment.