Ecologia’s first project in 1995 worked alongside Kitezh Children’s Community, founded in 1992 during Perestroika by Dimitry Morozov on an empty piece of land 300 km from Moscow. He and a dedicated group of volunteer foster families were building a rural community as a home for orphaned children drawn from institutions to give them homes, families and an education within a supportive environment.

Winter Village 1998

Liza Hollingshead visited the community in Kitezh, 300km south of Moscow one freezing winter in 1994 and returned with others, groups of adults and eighteen teenagers from the Findhorn Youth Project in 1996. The Kitezh children returned the visit to Findhorn in 1997. 

Dmitry Morozov

Dimitry had heard about the Findhorn community and understood its principles. In 1998 Dmitry was invited to speak at the Findhorn Foundation Sustainable Communities Conference.

Russia – Kitezh 2016

1998 was the year of the economic crisis in Russia when all the banks folded, literally closed their doors. “Sorry no money left, it’s lost.” That led to worry about the survival of the Children’s’ Community at Kitezh. Ecologia Youth Trust came into being as a direct result. £20,000 was raised that year for Kitezh, then £30,000 the following year. The village doubled in size as a result.

The ‘Adopt a God Child’ idea took off and people from all over the world ‘adopted’ Godchildren at Kitezh. Funding was established to run a Social Work, Therapeutic Education and Community Building Training at Kitezh.

In 2002 the UK National Lottery funded a project to expand the impact of the Kitezh model in Russia. In 2004 building started on the second Kitezh village, Orion, with Maria Pichugina, previously a teenager at Kitezh, at the Head. DEFRA and the British Council paid for biological waste water treatment reedbeds at both Kitezh and Orion. Orion soon became a home for 10 foster families and 40 orphan children.

Games at Orion 2014

Kitezh and Orion are non-profit communities of foster families, aiming to give the children in their care a real chance in life. Founded on the principles of therapeutic education and care for nature, they are communities of dedicated foster parents, teachers, and psychologists who fill each child’s day with active work, study and play. Education at Kitezh is an all-round experience to prepare the children for life. Many of the children have suffered from the consequences of early trauma, so therapeutic work was established alongside other activities. Therapeutic Education and Psychology training for the foster parents and teachers was provided at Kitezh-Orion, forming the foundation of their therapeutic work with the children.

The aim is that the graduates of Kitezh and Orion enter adulthood as strong, stable individuals capable of playing their part in society. A remarkably high proportion of them have gone on to higher education, with many planning to return in order to give back to other children what they received.

Volunteers 2009

A successful volunteer programme ran at both Kitezh and Orion Communities with over 300 volunteers contributing between 1998 and 2022. Organised exchange visits for Schools and Youth Groups from the UK and USA were established in 2012.

And the children? Over ninety children have benefited from living in Kitezh since it began. As the older children graduate, new children arrive, rescued from orphanages and temporary shelters. They are adopted by the Kitezh families and embraced by the whole community. Their teachers in the Kitezh school are also their parents, and every aspect of Kitezh centres around them. To create a ‘Developing Environment’ is the key to their philosophy of education according to the founder, Dmitry Morozov, who says, “The main idea of Kitezh is to create an oasis of love, harmony and co-operation, to give orphan children the feeling of belonging to a family, a community, to give them a good education and to prepare them to go out into the world to become valuable, effective citizens of new, democratic Russia. Kitezh school is a harmonious holistic approach – a School of Life.” Four of the first group of orphans have won places at University – an exceptional achievement. The little street boys have grown into strong young men with a light in their eyes. The new children are reaping the rewards of the Play Therapy and other psychological work and have begun to heal the scars of their terrible early experiences. The teachers are experimenting with different forms of education, addressing the needs of the whole child, and the results are beginning to shine forth.

Foster family Pichugina

One child’s story: Sasha, 13 years old, joined a Kitezh family. When was 8 his mother sold him for 10 roubles (about 20 pence) at a metro station in Moscow. The man who ‘bought’ him, took him to an orphanage where he lived for four years. The rooms had either no light or no heat, so he lived in the corridor. When he came to Kitezh, the boy had never seen a television and had huge gaps in his education. He is bright, he is clever, he is interested in anything mechanical. He cried bitter tears in every lesson because he couldn’t answer the questions put to children 5 years younger than he.

Tamara Pichugina & Liza 2015

He walked alone along the forest paths because he couldn’t make friends with the other children. He had nothing to say, nothing to offer. So they gave him a loving teacher with lessons on his own, his new father took him to work with the bees, taught him how to chop wood, his mother taught him how to bake pies. His eyes brightened when he saw me because he knew how to say in English “Hello Liza! How are you?” This child now has a home, loving parents, he is beginning to be able to study at school with the other children, and to make friends with his brothers and sisters. It will be a long journey for Sasha, but now he has a future, and he will become someone.

Orion Village Community

Kitezh School is registered as an ‘Experimental School’ and has attracted children from Moscow and other centres as well as resident children. The project moved towards independent sustainability and became mostly self-sustainable, although Ecologia continued to support the children’s education and wellbeing until world events intervened. After the Covid pandemic, closely followed by the invasion of Ukraine, it was impossible to maintain the formal international relationship and since February 2022, international exchanges and the volunteers programme halted, although informal links remained. However, Kitezh and Orion continue to develop their schools to offer excellent education to many children, in addition to their own, and can generate sufficient income without the financial support of Ecologia. Their schools are flourishing and most of the foster children are now living independently. Our friendship remains.

Ecologia Youth Trust (1995-2024) was a Scottish based charity based at the Park, Ecovillage Findhorn, founded by Liza Hollingshead and brought to a close in 2024. Over the years it helped transform the lives of over 56,000 children, young people and families affected by poverty, inequality, disease and climate change in 7 different countries: Russia, Georgia, Thailand, Myanmar, Kenya, Uganda and Scotland.

Ecologia Youth Trust

Ecologia Youth Trust, 1995 – 2024, supported children, young people and families in many countries, including Russia, Thailand, Myanmar, Scotland, Kenya and Uganda. Founder Liza Hollingshead.