2009

Lighthouse Children's Center will be 9 years old.

The first children came to Lighthouse on April 7, 2001.  Our address was Apteegi 3 in the old town at that time.  Now the BMK-s Youth Center Generation2 is in that location, and we have been situated closer to our children's home areas in North-Tallinn Kopli 30a since Spring  2003. 

On January 17, 2001 our NGO was confirmed officially and Rev.Olav Pärnamets, Enn Laansoo, Eini Tserenkova, Helvi Kruusmann and Kersti Raudsepp from BMC were in the foundation team of the NGO Lighthouse Children's Center.   Mall Tamm working as director for Lighthouse now since 2004.

From the first day it was decided that our center would be a second home to the children who are having problems at home and in school.  There were children   who were afraid to go home because of different and various reasons and who were in great danger of becoming street children gang members.  In Lighthouse they have had a chance to eat, to shower and to wash their own clothes.  They have had help with their homework, they have had different opportunities to spend their time in a loving environment because we had very good Christian teachers from the first day in Lighthouse.

On the first day, six children came to Lighthouse.  Now we have more than 60 on the list. Every day we have 15-25 children from age 7 to 18 in our big family.  We liaise with several organizations doing the same work, like the child protection team, in the city government, the “Big Sister/Big Brother” Program, Generation2 Youth Center, and we have had several volunteers. 

From the beginning, we have had a lot of donors from the USA, Scandinavia and Estonia.  Thank you so much for your friendship, help and prayers.  Please continue praying, because every week we have some new child who needs our help.  Please pray that we can do our work without any mistakes, without problems or obstacles from families or the gangs some of our children belong to.  Please continue to pray for our children's relatives, that they could be able to see how lovely their own child is and so that they might be free of the addictions of alcohol, drugs etc.  Please continue to pray for our very gifted children that they may develop their own God given gifts.  We do everything we can in Lighthouse for these things as well, because that is our main task here – to show our children how special they are and how many people love them even if some of their relatives do not. 

We are very thankful to the other workers and volunteers who have been in Lighthouse during these five years.  The first director was Meelis Priimets. Then Kersti Raudsepp, whose idea it was to create Lighthouse for socially needy children and who was the first chairman of the board and also the second director after Meelis.  We are very thankful to the city government, who has been helping us financially.  That is a great support for us and I do not mean only in the financial sense.

Finally – grateful thanks to everybody who has helped us, thought about us and cared about our feelings, needs and emotions here.  We would also like to thank all those who gave us good advice, warmth and shared own personal love so generously towards our children and our staff during these  years.  God bless you all.   We are sure that we will be able to celebrate our 10th year anniversary, 15th year anniversary and so on, thanks to you, our friends and partners.