We have a lot of host families that would like to stay in touch with their Belarussian child or child’s family through out the year. We have an e-mail translation service that meets this need. The way it works is the American family emails their letter to ARK (arkdom28a@gmail.com) in Belarus. You can either send it as an attachment or in the body of the email. The staff in Belarus will translate the letter into Russian and deliver this to the child. Once the child responds they will translate their response back into English and e-mail it back to you. You can do this as many times as you like during the year. We ask that you send a tax deductible $25.00 donation to help us cover the costs associated with this service. Checks should be made payable to ABRO and mailed to P.O. Box 365, Zebulon, NC 27597 and noted for translation service.

Telephone Translation Assisted Calls

We also offer to the host families’ telephone translation assisted calls. This is especially useful for those who hosted children from the orphanages. You will need to have a phone that is capable of 3 way calling or a conference call feature. The first step is to send an e-mail to ARK letting them know what day and an approximate time you would like to call the child. ARK will phone the orphanage or child’s home and try to arrange for the child to be near the phone on that date and time if possible and will email you back with the arrangements  and the phone number to the orphanage.
On the pre-arranged day and time, you would call the ARK House at 011-375-222-253686 and ask for Masha or Lena. If the orphanage or the child’s home is in the Mogilev region they will put you on hold and call the orphanage or child’s home and conference you back onto the line.  Once the orphanage or family answers Lean or Masha will ask for the child and translate the conversation between the two of you. If the orphanage or family live outside the Mogilev region, once you have Lena or Masha on the line you would put them on hold.  Then you would dial the number for the orphanage and once the phone begins to ring you would “conference” or “flash” the ARK house back onto the line with you.
This also works well if you want to talk to the family of a child you have hosted.

Just be aware that you will be paying for 2 phone calls to Belarus. Check with your long distance provider about adding an international calling plan to Belarus. It really does not cost that much and you get a much better rate.

Both of these services will be covered with your $25.00 donation. Checks should be made payable to ABRO and mailed to P.O. Box 365, Zebulon, NC 27597 and noted for translation service.