Boarding school for orphans in Zhodino Boarding school for orphans is located forty-five km far from Minsk, in town-type settlement Zhodyno and has existed there for fifty years, so this year they are celebrating its 50th anniversary. Mariya Alexandrauna (photo), acting director of the school, says: “We now shelter 164 children aged seven to eighteen. All of them have experienced the very worst of life. They are abandoned by everyone. Almost every child has parents, in the school we have only three biological orphans, i. e. the children whose parents died. But no one visits the rest of the kids: neither parents, nor grandparents. There is literally a handful of those who visit their children. I sometimes wonder, if anything happened with me, how could my relatives abandon my children. No, nobody would do so. But the relatives here are another story. They are drinking heavily and do not work anywhere, that is why their children are here. You can talk to them.” Sergey (photo) is fifteen. He does not have parents at all. They all died. His father died when Sergey was just a toddler, so Sergey does not remember him. He lived with a foster family for six years, but he disliked it, so he was directed to this boarding school. He plans to enter an engineering college to work as a motor mechanic. Tanya (photo) is also fifteen. She has been living in this boarding school for four years, since she was eleven. Her parents live in a small town Starye Dorogi, they have a big family. Tanya has three sisters and three brothers, but they are already grown-up and have their own families. Tanya’s father is drinking heavily, and her mother has a weak heart. Olga (photo) is sixteen. When she was thirteen, she was taken into a boarding school for orphans in Borisov, then into Slutsk, and she has been living here for two years already. Her father died of cirrhosis caused by drinking alcohol when he was forty eight, and her mother also drinks alcohol. Olga’s mother lives in Borisov, and Olga goes there every weekend to visit her grandmother, not her mother. She only drops in on her. I wondered what would have become of those children but for the boarding school and its counselors. The counselors do everything possible to soften the kids’ hearts, to bring up real patriots who love their homeland. A proof of their success is a rack with Vyacheslav Dashkevich photos in the school’s hall (photo). Vyacheslav Dashkevich, an alumnus of this school died in Afghanistan, serving his country and was awarded military medal. We are positive that the spiritual literature presented to the boarding school will not be underused, but will be frequently used in teaching the children. This was what Tatyana Vladimirovna (photo), a teacher of the third grade, promised, because she was excited about the books, especially about “The Christian ABC”, published by the Bible Society of Belarus.