Semenovskya Correctional Institute

Boarding School

Mari-El Republic, Russia

The Semenovskya Correctional School is located in a very large and old building on the far outskirts of town. It is located across the street from the Mental Asylum and both institutions were placed there purposely to be far away from the general population. The amount of funding and the general condition of the building reflects the governments attitude that they are people not worth much attention.All of the children there are either orphans or have been removed from broken homes and all suffer emotional disorders. Chances are they have had skirmishes with the law also. In December of 2004 we purchased a new copier/printer work center as their copier had broken and there were no funds to replace it. Besides office use it is needed to print out class instructional material. In August of 2005 when we visited they had absolutely no supplies to be able to open the classrooms for 1st day of school on Sept 1. We were able to purchase $200 worth of paper, pencil, notebooks etc. With the exception of the class rooms which had recently been given a coat of paint, a tour of the property showed deteriorating conditions and no money for repair. In addition, due to the emotional instability of the kids there they are subject to violent outbursts and often beak windows, furniture etc. They struggle for money for repairs when what they really need is to install protective window grids or plexiglas windows so it becomes a never ending battle. We were only able to give an additional $100 towards repair of windows and the director said it would be close to $2000 to fix every window in the building.