Robert Sabuda

Telavi

In January of 2004, a story written by Seth Mydans about conditions at the Telavi Children’s Home appeared in the NY Times. That poignant article brought about a number of inquiries both to the US embassy in Tbilisi and to the Times. We are known at the embassy and we were asked if we would coordinate all of the inquiries and offers of donations. Yes, of course we would. That resulted in CCRFund adopting the Telavi home as our second project.

As at Dzegvi, but on a larger scale because there are so many more children and the needs are so much greater, we began with food, clothes and medicine. Yes, we also brought toys, candy and gum. They’re kids, after all.

 

On the advice of Amiran Tvartkiladze, our Georgian “senior advisor” and close friend, we took two busloads of Telavi kids to the zoo, circus and even to McDonald’s. You can read that story elsewhere on our site. It was a big success and we are forever grateful to Robert Sabuda – www.robertsabuda.com – for stepping in and providing the special funding we needed.

Robert Sabuda is probably our biggest blessing to date. He is a children’s author and book publisher who was so moved by Seth Mydans’ article that he visited Georgia just to see things for himself. Now he is stepping in to assist with some major capital improvements at Telavi -- boilers, windows, that kind of thing – that will make some major improvements in a lot of young lives.. He has also created our new logo. We have yet to meet him but we are looking forward to the opportunity.

Chuck