Kelvin, Irma and Paata
On January 31, 2007, Kelvin and Susan Pierce spent a week in Georgia, researching the different orphanages that Divine Child hopes to help and determine the best establishments to devote our efforts. Prior to our departure, we established contact with Irma Barbakadze, who was to act as our trip coordinator and translator during the visit. Irma also arranged for a driver for us, named Paata. Both Irma and Paata are absolutely wonderful people and we soon became good friends.
We visited twelve orphanages in and around Tbilisi. Without exception, all had enormous needs. Buildings are in poor shape, with wind blowing through broken windows and sagging doors. Bathrooms are falling apart and unsanitary. Roofs are leaky, heating is minimal. However, most of the directors are clearly devoted to the children and do their best with limited resources, and never once did we hear a child complain about anything.
In 1995, when our daughters were born, there were many true orphans in Georgia, and they were in orphanages in which the conditions were just terrible so many of the children did not survive. The conditions have improved to the point that most had a place to sleep and food to eat, but live an otherwise bare-bones existence. It seems as if most of the children we saw during our stay in Georgia had families nearby but were not able to live with their families because their families were simply too poor to care for them. Many of the children also had parents who were either in jail or alcoholics. About 55% of the population of Georgia lives below the poverty line with many of them living in extreme poverty. The real need as we saw it was to try to improve the living conditions for this new class of abandoned children and to set up working models at their orphanages and boarding schools that would give them a chance for a decent life as adults. More of the children need to be taught occupational skills to increase their chances of getting a job. Many of the children also need access to psychological help.
After considering all the options, we settled on Saguramo as the best place to begin. It’s about 25 km outside Tbilisi, at the foothills of a chain of enormous, snow-covered mountains in Northern Georgia. Most of the children were orphans or had alcoholic parents or parents in jail. The building with the director’s office was mostly abandoned, because it had no heat and was very large. The children lived and slept in an adjacent building, which was in very poor condition and was heated primarily by wood stoves.
Since we were there on a Saturday, not all of the children were there. We found about twenty-five children all in one large room with a small wood stove and a small TV. It was warmer in the room, but we still needed heavy clothes to be comfortable. The room smelled of smoke and a window was open to bring in fresh air. Most of the children were watching TV and talking with each other when we came in. We were introduced to a 6 year old boy who had arrived a few weeks earlier. 
He had been found living alone at the city dump. They knew nothing about his parents or even if they were alive, but he seemed to be a happy little kid as he followed us around and gave us big smiles. He was wearing sandals — they were all he had in terms of footwear. Most of the children did not own much more than the clothes and shoes that they were wearing. The bathrooms were in awful condition, with holes in the floor for toilets and only one shower for all of the children. The bedrooms were also in poor condition with very old beds and mattresses and blankets. Each bedroom had between two and four beds and one small metal wood stove which vented out through a removed window pane.
There was a pile of scavenged firewood at the entrance to the building that they used to heat the bedrooms at night. Dato told us that the children were healthy and had enough food to eat, but that their current level of funding was not enough to make any building repairs or to purchase any personal or recreational items for the children. He took us to the kitchen and showed us how the staff cooked all of the meals for the children on a larger wood stove. The kitchen also had a large gas stove but they could not use it because the gas had been turned off months ago because of non-payment. As we toured the facilities we could see the children interacting with Dato, and it was obvious that he cared deeply for these children and they cared for him. When it was time to leave, we opened up the trunk of the car, spread out a bunch of new scarves, and let each of the children pick one. We were surprised to see several of the boys pick out pink scarves with little hearts on them. We left extra scarves for Dato to give to the children that were home for the weekend.
