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Russia celebrates International Children’s Day

Charitable actions, which should help orphans and disabled children, children in trouble, will be held in all Russian regions

MOSCOW, June 1 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia celebrates International Children’s Day on Friday. Charitable actions, which should help orphans and disabled children, children in trouble, will be held in all Russian regions.

The Russian children’s fund will hold the 25th holiday for children from Moscow, Russia and CIS states on the first day of summer. This time over 10,000 children, primarily orphans, disabled children, socially vulnerable children with poor parents will attend the holiday, a source in the Russian children’s fund told Itar-Tass.

On this day 13 famous Moscow theatres will show the best Russian children’s spectacles for young spectators. The highlight of the holiday will be a charitable concert of the graduates from the Moscow State Academy of Choreography, which will be given on the main stage of the Bolshoi Theatre.

Some 74 offices of the fund will stage similar holidays in their regions, presenting theatrical performances and gifts to more than 100,000 children.

Along with the concert a festival dedicated to the children’s holiday and timed to the Russian victory in the Patriotic War of 1812 will be held on the Revolution Square in downtown Moscow.

Young guests of the holiday will attend a concert, quizzes, master classes for decorative crafts and a fair. Along with these events a real size model of a cannon made of ice that the Russian army was armed with 200 years ago will be placed at 12:00 Moscow time on the square. The cannon will ‘shoot’ with ice cream, the actors clothed in the fashion of the nineteenth century will treat children with this sweet delicacy.

Russian children’s rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov congratulated his colleagues, children’s rights commissioners in Russian regions on International Children’s Day and wished “to each Russian child a worthy life, perfect health, a strong and friendly family and attentive and careful adults next to him or her!”

Astakhov considers as very important the fact that “we begin to shape a childhood protection system in Russia and this process should unite the state authorities and the society, and draw attention and forces of all parents and children.”

The Russian children ombudsman noted that our main task should be the attention of Russian citizens to the problems of underage orphans, cultivation of an attractive image of a foster family with many children through the mass media, social advertising and the Internet. “It is also necessary to shape in the public mind the guidelines for adoption of children, their adoption in the family for upbringing and all-round help to them,” he added.  Protecting the rights of children, we should protect the right of children for family, do not set the interests and rights of children against the interests of the family, the rights and duties of parents, and support the family, seeking for its preservation, build-up and prosperity,” Astakhov pointed out.

This year the International Children’s Day is celebrated already for the 61st time. It is noteworthy that the tradition to mark this day originated in our country in the post-war years, when there were many reasons to worry about the fates of children.

The International Children’s Day was instituted in 1949 by the council of the Women’s International Democratic Federation at its session in Moscow. This holiday was celebrated on June 1, 1950 in 51 countries for the first time.