On December 28, Vitebsk District /Diana Kurilo - BELTA/. Children are a strategic resource of the state, believes the Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee, Alexander Kosinets. Today he visited the Velikolyetchansky orphanage in Vitebsk District, congratulated its pupils and their teachers on the upcoming New Year and Christmas holidays, and presented them with gifts, as reported by a BELTA correspondent. The "Our Children" campaign, currently underway across Belarus, is not a one-off event, the governor emphasised. "Children are a strategic resource of the state. If there are children, there is Belarus. A state cannot be built without them. We will be proud of them and do everything possible and impossible to ensure they have a happy childhood and become true citizens of our country," said Alexander Kosinets. Orphans, forced to live in boarding schools due to their parents being deprived of parental rights or abandoning them, will not be left without state care. At the same time, Alexander Kosinets believes it is necessary to make maximum efforts to return children to their biological families. "Nothing can replace a mother's affection and a father's care, so we will help such parents: some will be treated, some will be re-educated, and if this is not successful, we will find people willing to adopt or take in social orphans," he said. By 2015, family-type homes are to replace orphanages in the Vitebsk region. The Chairman of the Regional Executive Committee has instructed to develop a programme for the creation of such homes. Currently, there are 14 institutions in the region where orphans are raised. The pupils of the Velikolyetchansky orphanage received five computers, table tennis tables, soft furnishings, and sets of New Year's sweets as gifts from the Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee. The children showed the governor a New Year's performance, and one of the best pupils of the orphanage, Yulia Tikhnovetskaya, who had just returned from the Presidential Christmas Tree event, presented Alexander Kosinets with a collective children's work – a cross-stitched picture titled "Winter Landscape".-0-

BELTA