SOCIETY

“Family Adoption”

A pioneering, for our society, project which works proactively so that the removal of a child from the biological parent can be avoided. The parents who had participated and are still participating in this project are mainly single mothers unfortunate in life who happened to find themselves unprotected and without any support by anyone, and NOT parents whose children are in danger because of them.

Our aim is for the biological mother to be refined and become in essence the child’s mother with whatever this entails (it concerns single-parent families whose children are not in immediate distress).

Thus, the mother or the parent, who takes part in it, is reinforced, so that he or she can fully take on their parental role through various services that we offer via a team of scientific personnel of the Ark of the World which consists of Social Workers, Psychologists, educators, mental health counselors, lawyers and other external collaborators.

In this way, we help so as for the family bond not to be disturbed, something that the welfare state should have foreseen and taken care of, for the child not to experience the emptiness in his/her soul due to the potential lack of the parent, since, from our experience, this emptiness is hardly substituted.

In this way, we substitute the social care of the state which is barely present, we safeguard family as an institution and the abandonment, the economic depreciation and the pattern of a victimized parent by his child are being avoided.

So as for this to be achieved, we run the below mentioned programs:

• Housing for the mother and the child (allowances for the rent or offering of flats) (120 flats)Its goal is the homeless and needy –as well- mothers who are supported with financial aid in a monthly basis, paying for the rent of small apartments and giving money to these mothers for water and electric power bills. The economic depreciation and the disintegration of the family are being avoided and its unity and empowerment are being strengthened, because, having a strong family as the core of our society leads to a powerful society as well.
• Material, psychological, educational support and at the same time professional reintegration of the mother through vacancies that are offered to us by various companies because of the character of our scheme.
• Assistance with the education of their children through a variety of programs of the Day-Center of the Ark of the World (nursery, kindergarten, remedial tutoring, groups with artistic, visual artistic, social and athletic projects, psychologist, speech therapist etc).Within the premises of our philosophy that education is a way through which someone can overcome the dead ends of life, ignorance and delinquency, we created the classes of remedial teaching for children of all ages in every school grade.
• Legal, social, educational (the opportunity of studying in second – chance schools or VETs), psychological, medical care support, professional reintegration.The mother, or the parent in general, gets psychological support by professional psychologists so as to get over the guilts that he/she may have had because of his/her situation, to gain self-esteem and dignity which, subsequently and with our help, he/she will embed to his/her children through his/her own dids. Professional reintegration, creation of a complete and healthy personality possessing a critical thinking, something that will enable him/her to convey the right of choice to his/her own child. (Unemployment, the economic depreciation which would lead her to delinquency and ignorance are being fought). A basic condition for a family to be able to stand strong is health. Unfortunately, in a daily basis, we receive families whose members are without a social number or social security, thus, we have to fully take on their medical care and support with medical examinations, doctors’ appointments and the provision of medication as appropriate. The scheme of medical care and support operates with the help of volunteer doctors, volunteer chemists and the social pharmacy of the Ark of the World as well, which helps 1000 families annually.  
• All the above mentioned, since 2017 and on, are offered to under aged mothers as well, who find themselves in danger, lacking of a supportive environment. We are entitled as the only organisation all over Greece that hosts an under aged mother with her child.
• 22 independent flats cited in our new Welfare, Rescue and Saving center for mother and child, in Athens, for mothers who are in danger (operation since 2017)