Dear friends and supporters,
Today we turn to you with positive news from our Lithuania project: after long, intensive negotiations Otmar Debald and Jurate Bogacz succeeded in convincing Reverend Donatas to release the two vacant Children’s Village houses in Kaunas for use as a “Youth Meeting House” for the PATRIA organization! We are very happy about that.
With this newsletter we kindly ask you for a Christmas donation to support the renovation and equipment of the two Kaunas houses and the annual gift campaign for the 85 children and young people in Lithuania.
Please find below our information about the new “PATRIA Youth House” and our 2020 Christmas campaign:
PATRIA YOUTH HOUSE IN KAUNAS
Our vision came true: the two Children’s Village houses in Kaunas will now be transformed into the “PATRIA- Youth-House”. Since October 2020 it is official: the representative of the Catholic Church, Reverend Donatas, has finally agreed that the PATRIA organization, which accompanies disadvantaged youth in Kaunas and the surrounding area on their way to independence, may take over the two Kaunas houses as a “Youth Meeting House”. This gives these young people a fixed, familiar place where they can meet for seminars and workshops, especially on the weekends, and where they can also spend the night. Until now, PATRIA had always had to rent premises for these purposes.
Handover of Kaunas houses to PATRIA organization on 06.11.2020
The two houses in Kaunas have an eventful history: they were purchased and expanded in 2009 with great financial support from our association “Kinderdörfer in Litauen e.V.” after the old Children’s Village house in the city center of Kaunas, which was rented from a monastery, had to be closed due to severe construction defects. 16 orphans found a loving home in the two single-family houses in a new construction area in Kaunas until a new welfare law determined that there should no longer be orphanages in Lithuania, but that the children should be placed in foster families or smaller care units. Because of some quarrels, first between the state and the Catholic Church, then between the Church and our association about the possibilities of use, the Kaunas houses were empty since 2018, which saddened us very much.
For the renovation and equipment of the houses we now need a donation volume of 12. 000 Euro and ask you very much for your support. The exterior condition of the two houses is fine, but inside they need renovation with painting and repairs. Since both houses have been emptied, we need new furniture, including 8 double bunk beds for a total of 16 youth, cabinets, tables and seating. Likewise, a workroom is to be set up in the garage. Our main sponsor Cosnova GmbH has agreed to donate 4,000 euros to equip the houses. Many thanks for this generous seed money! To cover the budgeted total costs, we now need an additional 8,000 euros and sincerely ask you for a donation. The houses are scheduled to be inaugurated early in the new year 2021 as “PATRIOS JAUNIMO NAMAI”.
CHRISTMAS CAMPAIGN 2020
The annual Christmas campaign for our children and young adults in Lithuania has been an integral part of our activities for 23 years and always brings great joy to us and the recipients. This year we have chosen cozy fleece blankets as gifts to provide warmth and comfort in the cold Lithuanian winter. In total, we want to give away 85 colorful, cozy fleece blankets (25 of them for the children in the Marijampoles Children’s Village and 60 for the young adults in the PATRIA program) as well as host nice Christmas parties and hope for your support.
The PATRIA organization will purchase the cuddly blankets in Lithuania. We send our Christmas cards to Lithuania from Frankfurt. Our request now is as follows:
- Please adopt a cuddly blanket as a gift for your sponsored child or for a young adult in the PATRIA program and donate 30 Euros for it. From this amount PATRIA will buy the cuddly blankets.
- Please write a Christmas card to your sponsored child or to a young person in the PATRIA program ( “Dear friend in the PATRIA-program”…), gladly with photo, in English or German. The children and young people are always very happy to receive personal mail from their German sponsors or supporters.
- Support the Christmas celebrations in each Children’s Village family and PATRIA with a general monetary donation of your choice. Likewise, we would like to give the team at Maijampole Children’s Village and the social workers at PATRIA a small Christmas gift in recognition of their valuable work.
Ingrid Debald has taken over the coordination of the Christmas campaign. We ask for news until November 29, 2020, if you would like to donate some money for the renovation and equipment of the Kaunas houses, for the purchase of a Christmas present or for the Christmas celebrations.
Ingrid Debald can be reached at ingrid.debald@web.de or Tel: 069/74309064.
Please send the personal Christmas letter for the sponsored child or young person in the PATRIA program by December 8, 2020 at the latest to Ingrid Debald, Lerchesbergring 107, 60598 Frankfurt/Main (Attention: new address!), so that we can send the letters in time by mail to Lithuania
Our account details are:
Children’s Villages in Lithuania e.V.
Frankfurter Sparkasse 1822
IBAN DE 14 5005 0201 1200 072 152
BIC HELADEF 1822
We would be VERY happy about a broad support of our fundraising for the PATRIA Youth Center and for our Christmas campaign 2020.
We wish you a wonderful pre-Christmas season and are with
best regards
Your team from “Children’s Villages in Lithuania e.V.”.
Otmar Debald, Jurate Bogacz, Ingrid Debald, Christine Scheid, Verena Nacke and Susanne Welsch-Lehmann