Just received an email from the orphanage Alissa was at, asking for vitamins and vaseline. We are putting together a box to send out to them this weekend. Luckily vitamins were on sale at Costco. You don't realize how expensive vitamins are for 100 kids until you go to buy them and realize that is one bottle per day. We were also able to send pictures of Alissa so that they could see how she was doing. It is nice to have one person there that speaks good english.
Alissa is still doing pretty well and is having good days at school. Hooray!
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Would you recommend bringing these items to donate when we go to Poland?
ReplyDeleteInteresting quetion. We weren't told to bring these items when we went - but I think it would have been more appreciated than the small gifts we were told to bring for individual caretakers. They really didn't want to appear to receive anything personally - even to the point that they seemed embarassed to take them. So I can only imagine that it would have been easier to accept if the "thank you's" had been for the kids. But it also seems that every orphanage is different.
ReplyDeleteOn our first trip I took a duffle bag full of clothes that our son had outgrown. Our facilitator wanted to check first to make sure it was okay. They said yes, and were very appreciative when we gave them to the director. On the next trip we saw kids that were out wearing our sons clothes. It seemed that this orphanage had plenty of joint toys and stuffed animals for the kids to play with.
That said, on your first trip, I would ask the orphanage director directly what they would like you to bring on the second trip to benefit all of the kids. If they don't routinely give kids vitamins for instance, 4-10 bottles doesn't really help them out much.
For some reason I had no idea that this kind of communication could exist between the family and the orphange. How amazing for Alissa to have that connection!! Awesome!!!
ReplyDeleteWhile we were there for our long bonding period and the after court (hang out period) we were pretty much on our own. The director was the only one that really checked on us and at one point she gave us her card - in case we needed to call her (I think Alissa had a cold). Right before we left she asked us to send update photos after we had been back awhile and reminded us that we had her card with email. Since the director here speaks English it may be easier than at other orphanages.
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