Welcome!
"What is Zvannieki?" It is a home and shelter for children - orphans or children from dysfunctional families. Zvannieki is also home for youth whose families are in crisis and the teens need a safe haven for a while.
Where is Zvannieki? Zvannieki is in Latvia (found on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea), approximately 100 km north of the capital city, Riga. It is found in the deep in the country area. Poverty and alcoholism are a constant for most persons living in the rural areas of Latvia. Unemployment and low wages create the areas of deep depression. (Most persons work for 1-2LS per day – approximately $.60 - 1.20USD – a pair of inexpensive shoes costs about 30LS and used shoes 7LS. A loaf of bread costs about .50LS and a kilogram of pork about 2LS. Go figure…)
Zvannieki is an NGO and all who work there are volunteers.
Who am I, the writer? My name is Sarma Eglite. I have spent the last year and a half working at Zvannieki as a volunteer. I have been chauffeur, bottle washer, grocery shopper, laundress, cook, dishwasher, child bather, soother, and paper shuffler – in essence ‘mother’. Immediately prior to this I was pastor for thirteen years of the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Boston. During that time I visited Latvia approximately two to three times a year, so have been able to visit Zvannieki since the beginning and had already come to know and love the children.
THE BEGINNING
Zvannieki exists since 2001. Its founders are the Reverend Juris Calitis and members of the Riga Ev. Lutheran Reformed congregation in Riga, with Sandra Dzenite as the driving force. It all began as in a dream, perhaps more accurately it began with a nightmare – there was a knock at the door… An inebriated man incoherently spat out “A baby is lost.” It was snowing and snowing hard. To believe or not to believe, that was the question. Is a baby lost in the snow? Two kilometers later, they came upon a rundown two-story apartment building. They tried to talk to the man’s partner, but she would not open the door or answer any questions. The Reverend Calitis found a ladder and climbed up to her window, but not to say “Rappanzal, Rappanzal, let down your hair!” He conversed with the woman through the window. She was drunk and clearly had been beaten, but no baby. Help was called for the woman. By then neighbors were becoming interested in the proceedings and one of them, in answer to the question does anybody know anything about a baby, answered that she had taken the baby a couple of days ago to care for it, because the baby’s parents were drunk and the infant had been constantly crying because it had not been fed or changed in quite a while.
One would think, a happy ending. The infant is found alive and well. There is a but. The neighbor did not want to continue caring for the infant. The mother was taken to the hospital. The father was still drunk. What next? There followed a discussion between the Reverend Calitis and Sandra Dzenite, a member of one of his congregations. Sandra was convinced that they should care for the child until the mother was released from the hospital and then help the mother learn to be a mother. The mother was only 24 at the time. Calitis was against this plan, knowing that it would not be so easy. Sandra convinced him. And so it all began.
