Our story
Nicola’s work with orphans did not start with Caring Family.
It started in St. Petersburg, Russia. It continued in a village children’s home in Kyrgyzstan. Caring Family is the home she and Drew are opening next.
Nicola
Nicola spent years inside St. Petersburg, Russia orphanages — teaching life skills in family settings, and serving children most at risk of being left behind. Administrators let her in when other foreign groups rarely got that access, because they trusted her.
She later worked with a village children’s home in Kyrgyzstan. She still went in 2010 when the country was in unrest. She ran dental trips until village nurses said those children had the best teeth in town. Graduates still call.
Hope for Tomorrow became a US nonprofit in 2009, after she had already been visiting Russian orphanages for years.
That is the experience behind Caring Family: years of showing up, not a plan on paper.
Drew
Drew spent about a year and a half in rural Guyana as a boy in the mid-1960s. That experience changed how he sees the world.
He met Nicola while she was serving at that village children’s home in Kyrgyzstan. They married in 2017. In 2018 he went with her and saw the work first-hand. He did not want to leave. He stands with her in opening Caring Family’s home.
What we’re building now
In 2022 they set out to open a family home of their own in the Kyrgyz Republic.
They are preparing now. Departure is planned for late May or early June 2027. First they will establish the home and themselves in the community. Then they will receive children — by 2029, or sooner if the home is ready.
Not an institution. A house. A table. A garden. A family.
$150,000 lets us begin.
$550,000 means the home is ready when children arrive.
Monthly gifts are how a home eats. A one-time gift helps us begin. Even a dollar makes a difference.
Gifts are received by Hope for Tomorrow, a US 501(c)(3), and go to Caring Family’s home in the Kyrgyz Republic until Caring Family can receive them directly.
A note on children
We do not put children’s names or faces on this site. Their stories stay private.