1. Established in the early days of Lithuania‘s independence, Lithuanian Children‘s Hope has been active for more than 30 years. Would you please give a summarized history of the founding of this organization?
In 1992, when I was the president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the charitable organization Birutė, I received a call from the president of Lithuanian Children’s Hope (LCH) established in Chicago requesting that we create an auxiliary branch of that organization in Los Angeles. Its mission was to help handicapped or ailing children from a newly-free post-Soviet Lithuania who due to many years of Soviet neglect could not get the treatment they needed in their homeland. The Chicago Shriners Hospital had admitted so many needy children from Lithuania that they needed us to help handle the overflow. She explained that the medical services provided by Shriners Hospitals were free of charge, but that we would have to bring the children and one of their parents to Los Angeles, find them housing and provide them the necessities of life. Since the children and their parents did not speak English, we would need to find volunteers who could translate, drive them back and forth to medical appointments, visit them pre- and post-surgery in the hospital, comfort them, etc. The Chicago chapter would provide us with the necessary funds. All they needed was our commitment to take care of them. Our first three patients were teenage girls with scoliosis. They would each need about six weeks in Los Angeles for their operations and rehabilitation.
How could we refuse? I decided to call a meeting of representatives of all of the major Lithuanian American charitable and public affairs organizations in Los Angeles. I planned to ask not only for their support, but also to form a committee of volunteers to help with all of the functions mentioned above. I was pleasantly surprised when all of them responded very positively and sent delegates to our meeting. Represented were members of Birutė, the Lithuanian American Community, Daughters of Lithuania, Lithuanian Scouts, ‘Ateitis’ and the Lithuanian Catholic Women’s Association. And so the Los Angeles chapter of ‘Lithuanian Children’s Hope’ was born. The officers of that first committee were Marija Danguolė Navickienė – president, Dalilė Polikaitienė – secretary, Ingrida Jodelienė – treasurer and members Laima Ringienė, Raimonda Kontrimienė, Angelė Vaičekauskienė, Laima Jarašūnienė, Danutė Baltutienė and Sigita Adams. Our volunteer providers of food, comfort and other necessities were Julija Petronienė and Genė Žaliūnienė. Later, we were joined by Giedrė Petraitienė, Frank Joga, Victoria Joga-Empakerienė, Rymantė Vizgirda, Vilia Žemaitaitytė and Romas Žemaitaitis. Our current newest member is Dr. Daiva Bartulis.
Realizing that we needed strong shoulders for many tasks, we eventually admitted our husbands: Jonas Navickas, Antanas Polikaitis, Vytautas Vaičekauskas, Julius Jodelė and Ričardas Ringys, for we had to pick up donated furniture, bedding, kitchen equipment and food and transport them to apartments generously provided rent-free from several sources. We had to order utilities such as electricity and gas as well as telephone service. We always needed extra helping hands from volunteers to help drive and visit the patients, etc., for besides our commitment to Lithuanian Children‘s Hope, the majority of us still had full-time jobs.
Of invaluable assistance and contributions to our cause were the two ‘resident chefs‘ of our community Genė Plukienė and Laima Leko. Their free of charge work in the kitchen preparing the meals for our koldunai (little flour and meat dumplings) feast greatly increased our profits over the years.
25 years later, when I felt that it was time to take a break from the leadership position, the committee decided to invite Rasa Šilkaitienė to take over the presidency. She has been successfully leading our organization since 2017.
The realization of how invaluable to our organization the participation of our male committee members would prove to be came to us quite unexpectedly. When we started bringing more children to Los Angeles, some of whom would need longer and repeated treatment like our burn victims, we understood that we would need more funds, a larger group of volunteers and greater support from our community. We tried to supplement our resources by passing a hat after Sunday Mass, but that was a very slow process.
Fortunately, my husband Jonas Navickas had a skill little known by our wider community. He used to entertain friends by making ‘koldunai‘ from an old recipe his mother had left him. This turned out to be a very useful gift. He once made them for a larger group of friends to raise funds for textbooks for the newly re-established Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas.
When Lithuanian Children‘s Hope started planning our first fundraiser, he volunteered to make enough koldunai to feed the 80 guests that we estimated would attend. The attendance at the fundraiser went better than expected and we had to turn away some people standing in line at the door. The next year he prepared enough for 120 supporters and it turned out that once again more people turned up than we could feed. This scenario repeated itself for the next few years when we reached hall capacity at 240, filling the hall for many years.
Jonas ended up making about 6,000 koldunai each year for the next ten years until his death. He would not accept any help, supposedly for ‘quality control‘, but actually because he so loved being able to contribute to such a worthy cause that this herculean task brought him much joy. His hard work and that of the entire committee inspired our supporters to increase their donations each year and money started rolling in. When our supporters saw and felt the plight of our burn victims, donations increased even more. We eventually reached close to $2,000,000, most of which we quickly spent on renovations, equipment and patient operations abroad.
2. What inspired the establishment of this nonprofit organization? As time went by were there any changes in direction or target audience for the medical assistance you provided?
Early on in our work we understood how important and necessary it was to improve medical care for children and to improve facilities in Lithuania. It was obvious how seriously the facilities were neglected, how in Soviet times the isolated doctors and surgeons had little access to new advances in medicine and modern equipment. The condition of the wards was deplorable – the little patients were frightened and unhappy. We understood that it was imperative to change as much of this as we could to safeguard the health of Lithuania’s future – her children.
In later years, after hearing from the charitable organization Daughters of Lithuania about the horrible condition of the teeth of a significant number of children in orphanages and care homes, we decided that this could be a new important project for Lithuanian Children‘s Hope and we quickly jumped on it. With the cooperation of the Žalgiris Dental Clinic in Vilnius we sent orthodontists to a large number of facilities working with underprivileged children and based upon their needs, brought them to nearby clinics and to Žalgiris Clinic in Vilnius. More happy smiles!
3. Anyone who has ever heard or read about Lithuanian Children’s Hope knows full well the contributions by this organization to juvenile orthopedics and the medical staff working in this field. Please mention the main supporters, donors, and any other means by which this organization played an active part.
As I mentioned before, the fruits of our hard work increased and inspired our donor base. In addition to our regular loyal supporters supplementing their donations, we began to see some very large donations from new donors. Among the highest donors from our early years we count the family of Julija and Emilis Sinkys, Vilija and Andrius Kiršonis, Ramunė and Gintautas Vitkus, Violeta and Mindaugas Gedgaudas, Aušra Bulotienė, Juozas Kaributas, Jurgis Glažė and the Lithuanian National Hall.
4. To which main programs or initiatives did Lithuanian Children‘s Hope afford the most attention during your term as president?
In the early days we paid the most urgent attention to children who could not get the help they needed in Lithuania. We initially looked for the ones living without hope to give them a bettter, healthier life.
5. In your opinion, what were the major accomplishments of this organization during your term of office?
- We brought about 22 children with a variety of orthopedic problems to Los Angeles Shriners and other hospitals.
- We repeatedly brought 7 badly burned children to Los Angeles to repair their scars as much as possible. A couple of them had to return to Los Angeles numerous times for progressive operations, one of them even six times!
- To other hospitals in the US we sent children with non-malignant brain tumors for whom there was no help in Lithuania. One arrived with a young Lithuanian surgeon who observed her surgeries and brought those skills to Lithuania.
- We brought other orthopedic and plastic surgeons and even nurses from Lithuania to perfect their skills.
- Understanding that both emotionally and physically it would be best for the children to undergo long treatments and operations near home, we began to provide both doctors and patients with better conditions for health care in Lithuania. We remodeled, reconstructed and furnished the entire Trauma center in Vilnius Children‘s Hospital – operating rooms, wards, procedure rooms. We even remodeled a lovely game room complete with a computer donated by Microsoft Lithuania, books and toys.
- More help for Vilnius Children‘s Hospital:
– Newest equipment and incubators for the Premature Infants Department.
– New equipment for the Urology and Oncohematology departments.
– Medications which were very expensive or even impossible to get in Lithuania. - Important equipment for the Kaunas Clinics Childrens Unit.
- Sponsorship of the 2005 European Burns Association Conference in Vilnius.
- Publication of the leaflet ‘Let’s Protect Our Children From Burns‘ in Lithuania.
- Based on official international evaluations, thanks to our assistance, child mortality from burns in Lithuania decreased significantly.
6. Please recount one story in your personal experience with a patient or a project that is somehow exceptional.
It is difficult to narrow it down to a single story of success. In my opinion, every single child we heal is a miracle in itself. With the remodeling of entire departments in Vilnius Children‘s Hospital, new equipment in several areas of several hospitals, with better education of the doctors and surgeons, there are thousands of children who get better care. We can count every one of them as ‘our‘ patients.
The most visible and tangible results are most likely the newly opened world of our burn patients. Before their operations, as they go through life they are often looked at with some level of disgust. After all, their face is their window to the world. If their scarred faces can only show pain and they can‘t smile or show emotions, it can seem to those around them that they have no emotions and no attempts are made to get to really know them, to understand them.
Our first and youngest burn patient named Justinas is an exceptional success story. Due to the severity of his burn scars, he stayed with us the longest – a total of six visits for 18 operations at Los Angeles Shriners Hospital. With each visit he edged more and more out his shell and began to show his personality. And that personality, that courage were absolutely amazing. When Justinas finished all of his operations and grew older, he found a lovely, sweet girl who fell in love with him and they decided to marry. I was grateful to be invited to their wedding in Lithuania. During that wedding I cried so many tears of joy that strangers probably assumed that there was something wrong with me. We have heart-rending pictures of that and weddings of other children we have gifted a normal, happy life.
7. In many cases, non-profit organizations that seek to help certain vulnerable members of our society are often faced with a variety of problems such as that society’s lack of information about help accorded to a small circle of recipients or a lack of cooperation from government institutions. What type of challenges did Lithuanian Children’s Hope have to overcome during your leadership?
In reality, one cannot say that help is given to a comparatively small circle of children. Having learned of improved facilities and perfected methods of healthcare in Lithuania, especially Vilnius Children‘s Hospital, in many cases it has become unneccessary to look for help in other countries. More parents seek healthcare by going to clinics and hospitals in Lithuania. Each year thousands of children are being healed at the Vilnius Children‘s Hospital (now renamed Santaros Clinics) and other institutions we have helped equip, so no, our circle of patients has increased, not decreased.
Speaking of challenges, logistics was one that we were worried about. Since Lithuania is a small country, we had decided early on not to buy ‘little gifts‘ for many healthcare institutions, but rather concentrate on an essential priority – to pick a major large hospital that was capable of providing the most necessary services and help it improve those services for as many children as possible. We had some worries about how those children would reach the Vilnius Children‘s Hospital, but eventually the problem of logistics turned out to be not as frightening or impossible as we originally feared.
8. In the early days of Lithuanian Children‘s Hope, how successful were you in making contact and developing partnerships not just with the Lithuanian medical community but also outside of Lithuania? Were there discussions on this subject with Lithuanian public institutions and other non-government organizations (NGO’s)?
Our most productive alliances within the medical community in Lithuania were:
Dr. Olga Zimanaitė – Advisor to the Director of Vilnius Children‘s Hospital and Director of the Health Institution Support Foundation. She was the Liaison between Lithuanian Children’s Hope and the Director of the hospital and well as the department heads at Vilnius Children’s Hospital. She also oversaw the contractors performing the remodeling work. She acquainted us with the functions of each department, its personnel and its needs. She organized many interviews with the press and on television. She guided us through all of the stages of our projects.
Professor Dr. Alina Pūrienė – the director of the Vilnius University Hospital Žalgiris Clinic. She helped us initiate the dental health project for underprivileged children, facilitating every step of the way.
9. Who were or still are the main partners of your organization in the United States who provided professional medical treatments on this side of the Atlantic? How were you able to convince them to join you in your noble mission?
Dr. Jonas (Edward) Domanskis – American Lithuanian plastic surgeon practicing in California. He performed operations on several children with burns and facial deformities in his offices and taught his methods to the visiting plastic surgeons from Lithuania. He made several trips to Lithuania where he performed operations with his Lithuanian colleagues. We never had to convince him to help us.
Dr. Richard Grossman – the founder of the world renowned Grossman Burn Center in Los Angeles invited surgeons from the Vilnius Children‘s Hospital to observe surgeries, learn his methods and become acquainted with the newest technology and instrumentation. I was totally amazed when without hesitation he agreed to mentor them.
Surgeons Dr. Susan Kay and Dr. Hugh Watts of the Los Angeles Shriners Hospital also accepted two Lithuanian surgeons to observe them at the hospital and explore new methods and technologies. They, too needed no persuasion.
10. On the subject of significant acquaintanceships with supporters, influential or famous Lithuanians, to whom are you grateful for their contributions to the successful history of Lithuanian Children’s Hope?
We were extremely gratified when the President of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus and his wife Alma Adamkienė showed interest and support for our work by attending the grand openings of our projects at Vilnius Children‘s Hospital. We were happy to see other officials – Mayor of Vilnius Artūras Zuokas and his wife at that time Agnė Zuokienė as well as representatives of the Lithuanian Parliament and other government institutions. Their abounding support and attention assured us that they consider our work important.
11. As the longtime leader of Lithuanian Children‘s Hope, your merits for the successful implementation of those projects and expanding the scope of your support did not go unnoticed or unappreciated in Lithuania. In 2007, President Valdas Adamkus awarded you a medal of merit ‘For Services to Lithuania‘, in 2014 you were honored with an award from Global Lithuanian Leaders and in 2016 you received a Certificate of Honor of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania. What do these awards mean to you?
I do not do this work for glory, yet I feel very honored. However, it is the entire Lithuanian Children‘s Hope team that is worthy of the honor. On those special occasions I always pointed out that I did not work alone and that I am accepting this medal or trophy on their behalf. Without their hard work nothing could have been done. They helped with all of the tasks – collecting donations, taking care of the children we had brought here for healing, making koldunai with friends and the Knights of Lithuania after my husband‘s death, decorated the hall for the koldunai fundraisers. They coaxed their children and grandchildren into helping serve the food. They cleaned up after the event, down to sweeping the hall. During our annual Lithuanian Days they work at our booth collecting donations for future projects.
12. How do you imagine the continuity of the mission of Lithuanian Children‘s Hope in the coming decades?
Whenever I am asked, I usually answer that we shall search until we find any worthy projects to help Lithuania‘s handicapped or otherwise ailing children. We shall work until we are no longer needed.
13. What would you wish for the current ‘Lithuanian Children’s Hope‘ committee members and other volunteers?
I urge them to continue seeking worthy projects, to have confidence in themselves and the value of their work, to have commitment to their goals, to persevere, to love the children they are helping. They must also love one another, for this is a labor of love. Nothing can bring more joy than the smile of a healthy and happy child.
