Founder’s Statement
Hello, my name is Ariana Mamedova. I am a high school student from Virginia, USA, and the founder of the Alexander Berdus Foundation for Education of Displaced Children (AB-FEDC). I started this Foundation with a team of like-minded people of various ages and backgrounds, hoping to join our efforts in providing support, resources, and funding to help displaced children continue their education and confidently navigate new school environments and unfamiliar circumstances they happen to face after leaving their homes due to many reasons: unsafe living conditions, violence, persecution, conflict, natural disasters, or other crises. Whether displaced from abroad or within the United States, they face the enormous challenge of resettling and adjusting to new realities, often with a lack of support in many important aspects. While the government and nonprofit organizations may assist with meeting the basic needs of such kids (safety, nutrition, or medical support), our Foundation exists to focus on facilitating the transition by providing additional education and continued learning opportunities for displaced children resettled in the United States.
You may also be wondering who this mysterious “Alexander Berdus” is and why I named the Foundation after him. Well, Alexander is a boy whose life story inspired and motivated me to start the Foundation. Unfortunately, I have never met him in person because we happened to miss each other’s existence in time. Alexander was my great-grandfather, born almost 100 years ago. But I read his diary and learned the story that can’t leave anyone indifferent. When Alexander was only five years old, his family fled their home during the Holodomor famine in Ukraine. On that long and trying journey, his mother was unable to support all four of her children and lost them all, one by one, on the way to the ‘Promised Land’. This heartbreaking quote from Alexander’s diary witnesses the beginning of Alexander’s grim childhood memories:
“In 1933, our family decided to make our way to the Ob River in Siberia, where, as many believed, there were better chances to find a job and get food to feed their families. On the way there, my elder brother Dmitry ran aboard a steamboat and disappeared. Since we have never heard from him. In Novosibirsk, my mother left the youngest brother, Kolya, on the market square. Then it was my turn. She left me near a grocery store in Kamen-na-Obi and walked away with Misha, who was already ‘big’, 10 years old. The local militia found me and took me to an orphan house.”
Through his orphanage years, Alexander had run away to escape harassment by older boys, skied 500 km up the Ob River all alone, walking only at night, survived two drowning incidents, and many attacks by wolves and wolverines chasing him along the route. At the age of 13, he started working as a blacksmith at a plant making shells and fixing planes for Soviet soldiers fighting in WWII. Alexander resiliently overcame countless hardships and miraculously survived many dangers on his bitter path to adulthood. He never found his lost brothers but lived the rest of his life with a passionate dedication to caring for and helping children in need.
Alexander’s story is just one of the countless voices of displaced children scattered all over the world throughout time. By establishing the AB-FEDC Foundation, I hope to carry on Alexander’s legacy, honoring the memory of Alexander and his lost siblings, and to keep Alexander’s mission alive for the sake of the children who face similar challenges due to losing the peace and comfort of their home environments today.
By now, almost a century later, the world has yet to solve the crisis of child displacement, among many others. Today, millions of children continue to be uprooted by war, disaster, and instability, left to navigate unfamiliar worlds on their own. According to UNICEF, by the end of 2024, nearly 50 million children had been displaced due to conflict and violence. A couple of years ago, while working on my Eagle Scout project for Comfort Cases, a nonprofit organization supporting children entering foster care, I realized that in the United States, one of the safest and most prosperous countries in the world, according to US Department of Health and Human Services, as of 2023, there are 343,077 children in foster care almost 5,000 of which are located in Virginia. This sad realization that 100 years were not enough for our society to end the suffering of displaced children is what drove me to start this Foundation.
At this moment, the AB-FEDC team is focusing our efforts on raising funds and providing direct support through awarding scholarships to displaced children resettled in the U.S. The awardees will use the scholarships to pay for classes, programs, books, and other educational needs, helping them secure continued uninterrupted education on the way to a safe and bright future.
With hope and determination, I invite you to join the AB-FEDC Foundation team in pursuing our mission. Every volunteer and every donation, no matter the amount, can help make a real difference in a child’s life. Let’s walk the walk together to help displaced kids overcome some obstacles preventing their access to education and bring all the letters “displaced” on their long and winding road to quality education back together. Thank you for your support!
