For Immediate Release
Evergreen, CO — Four Russian child welfare and social service leaders will visit Denver and Jefferson County September 24–October 2 on the congressionally sponsored Open World Program to observe American approaches to family, single-parent and child support services. Two delegates come from the Tver region in European Russia, which has a sister-county relationship with Jefferson County.
The Evergreen Rotary Club will conduct the delegation’s visit. The organization and its Russian sister club, the Rotary Club of Tver, have partnered on a number of educational, business development and other projects, including ongoing social service projects involving the two delegates from Tver.
Managed by the independent Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress, Open World enables emerging political, civic, and economic leaders from Russia and other participating countries to experience U.S. democracy and free enterprise
while building professional ties with their American counterparts. The arrival of the Evergreen delegation marks a significant milestone in Open World’s six-year history: the group includes the program’s 10,000th participant.
During their stay in Colorado, the delegates will meet with Jefferson County Human Services and Denver Human Services staff for an in-depth look at the treatment and protection of abused children; visit the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA)
program in Golden, dedicated to helping neglected or abused children who land in family court; discuss programs that provide support for low-income families at the Mountain Resource Center in Conifer; and visit the Mt. Evans Hospice and Home Health Care in
2 Evergreen to examine U.S.-government financed health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
The Russian leaders are Nataliya Kondratchik, who heads up the Department for Family Reintegration and the Prevention of Child Abandonment and Neglect for the St. Petersburg branch of EveryChild, a London-based international children’s organization; Yelena Moreva, a teacher-psychologist at the Tver Rehabilitative Boarding School, where she works with mentally and physically challenged children; Nadezhda Shevchuk, Director of the Social Assistance to Family and Children Tver Regional Center, a public agency; and Marianna Yakovenko, head of the Department of
Psychological and Pedagogical Support of Families with Children at the Krasnoflotsky District Center for Community Outreach in the Khabarovsk region of the Russian Far East.
During their stay in Evergreen, the delegates will be introduced to American family and community life through homestays with local Rotarians, and also have opportunities to explore the outdoor recreational life of the Denver region. Rotary International, the parent organization of the Evergreen Rotary Club, has been one of Open World’s main hosting partners since the program’s inception.
Open World is a unique, nonpartisan initiative of the U.S. Congress that builds mutual understanding between the emerging leaders of participating countries and their U.S. counterparts. It also exposes delegates to ideas and practices they can adapt for use in their own work. Founded in 1999 with a focus on Russia, the program expanded in 2003 to include pilot exchanges with Lithuania, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Delegates range from members of parliament to mayors, from innovative nonprofit directors to independent journalists, and from political party activists to regional administrators. The program’s administering agency, the Open World Leadership Center, is a legislative branch entity with offices at the Library of Congress.
For more information on the Evergreen visit, please contact Bob or Brenda Hagerman at 303-697-5708 or George Felcyn of The PBN Company at 202-466-6210.
For more information on the Open World Program, please visithttp://www.openworld.gov.
