Kim Wepler, the founder and director of Petrova’s Promise, is the mother of four children, three of whom were adopted from Russia. Before becoming pregnant with her first child, she was a pediatric physical therapist at a children’s hospital.

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While she and her husband were in Russia adopting their first child in 2001, Kim fell in love with the people of Russia, especial the children, and made the decision to come back and help in some way. The children living inside the orphanages were getting the basic care that they needed, however, there wasn’t enough love being provided. Kim then began to wonder about the orphans she couldn’t see…the orphans who were sick or who had mental and physical disabilities. Where were these children? It took four years to find someone in Russia that was willing to help her get access to these children, and when she did, it was horrifying. At that point, Kim decided to form a non-profit in 2007 dedicated to helping these hidden children.

 

In the beginning, Kim gathered or purchased used or new leg and arm orthotics (braces), leg and arm prosthetics (artificial limbs), crutches, walkers, wheelchairs and other medical equipment and brought them over to the children. To witness a child walk for the first time with the leg braces and walker that Kim brought over was all it took for Kim to dedicate herself to these children. Kim has been doing this since the beginning and will continue to always do so.

 

Around 2012, Russia put a halt to almost all foreign adoptions. It is difficult for most Russians to adopt their orphans as many of them have extensive problems of their own as well as great financial difficulties, just trying to survive themselves. This left even more children to grow up in the system and made it even more difficult for children with special needs to be able to find families. Because of this, Kim came up with the idea to purchase an apartment where Petrova’s Promise could take care of these children ourselves, with the assistance of a few “angels” that would provide the love and day to day care. At this point the idea of Petrova’s Home was born. However, it would take many years to actually develop this idea. Petrova’s Promise joined forces with ROST, a Russian NGO run by her friends Masha Khadeeva and Alexey Svakhin to assist Petrova’s Promise in this project. First Petrova’s Promise had to find an appropriate home to purchase, then all of the construction needed to be done to make the apartment into a home for the children. Once all of this was complete, the most important and difficult step was finding the perfect person to live with and care for children in the home. Petrova’s Promise had already found the perfect child to care for in the home and her name was Valya. To read more about Valya, please click here.

 

Soon after bringing Valya into the care of Petrova’s Promise, we met another angel who wanted to help care for these children with our assistance and we were able to start another foster family to care for another child, Vova. To read more about Vova, please click here. Soon after that, through Katya, Kim met Artem, and we were able to help support him as well! To read more about Artem, please click here.

 

More quickly than we could have ever dreamed, angels around the Moscow area were coming forward that wanted to care for children in a family environment yet couldn’t afford to do so. Petrova's Promise pairs up with these wonderful women to make our families.  We do this using all of our love, as well as giving our financial assistance. We are making families for these lost and hidden children that would never have hope. Our plan to continue to grow and make even more families in the future. We want to be able to care for and give love to as many children as we can inside our foster homes.

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To learn more about the Petrova's Promise story, or contact Kim directly, please reach out to us at KimWepler@PetrovasPromise.org.