Imagine being placed in a dim lit room with kids you've never seen before. You are lined up in a single file line waiting for your punishment because one kid chose to disobey. This happens to children on a daily basis in Russian orphanages. In these orphanages children are beaten and neglected. They are tethered to stationary objects and go days and sometimes weeks without being bathed. Their meals consist of porridge and potatoes every single day. Not all orphanages in Russia beat and neglect the children, but they still don't give them the childhood that they deserve. About 95% of Russia's orphans have at least one living parent. That means that only 5% of the children are parentless. The parents who waive their parental rights are usually alcoholics or drug addicts. The biggest mistake that mothers make is to get pregnant and not tell the father. This, of course, is only if the two people are not married. Think about how different the child's life could've been if the father had known. They would have at least had another chance at having a healthy lifestyle. Many Americans adopt Russian orphans, and about 20% of them suffer a developmental difficulty. The orphans have a hard time adapting once they are brought to America because they are not used to the freedom they are given and are often traumatized by what they went through in the orphanages. Because the orphans struggle with adapting, the adoptive parents sometimes return the children. There have been 18 cases where a Russian-adopted child has died from violence by the adoptive parents. Roughly 75% of the orphans were sent back within 6 months of their arrival in America, and they were under the age of 2! They weren't even given a chance. As Christine Viason Miller once said, "At and givven moment you have the power to say;this is not how the story is going to end." We can change the world no matter how old or how young we are. If every one of us finds something that we are passionate about, and act on it, we can change the world. We are the future, and so are the orphans of Russia.