I passed through Lenin Square often when I was in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in 2005. I'd cast a quick eye on the resolute statue of the Communist revolutionary on the way to the business center I used to send e-mails home during my two adoption trips.

But this past Saturday, June 23, Lenin Square got much more than a passing glance. Washington, D.C.-based charity Kidsave International used it as the kick-off point for a march involving 200 children from orphanages on Sakhalin Island. No, not a protest march: More like a pageant, a parade designed to help them find adoptive families among those along the route. And it ended at the Sakhincenter, the very building I went to send news home about the expansion of my family.

Kidsave, which was created in 1997, uses a family visit and mentoring model to help children in Russia, the United States and around the world find mentors, role models and forever families. It has been in Russia for about six years, starting in Smolensk (a smallish region on Russia's western border) and expanding to St. Petersburg, Moscow and, in 2005, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Although it once ran a summer hosting program in the U.S. for Smolensk children, its primary effort has always been to find host families for kids in Russia. Hence events like the one this past weekend to make Russian mentors aware of the children in their midst. Kidsave is among the 59 U.S.-based groups that currently are registered as non-governmental agencies in Russia, but it is not an adoption agency.

According to Terry Baugh, one of Kidsave's co-founders, its objectives are very straightforward: To give Russian orphans the chance to experience life with Russian families during the summer and on weekends. Sometimes, that leads to a more permanent bond. Kidsave says that it has helped 300 orphans move from orphanages into family care. It also runs programs to build life skills to help orphans make the often difficult transition from orphanages when they age out of the system.

Where can you go to get more information on Kidsave? Its Web site has general information about all its programs and a specific section on its efforts in Russia. It does not, unfortunately, as of this writing have its current financial statements online, either on its own site or that of Charity Navigator. Its 2004 statements show an efficiency rating (a measure of how much is spent on programs versus overhead) a bit lower than I like to see, but hopefully that will change with the updated results.