A hope chest, by its dictionary definition, is a box in which unmarried women store things they will need once they get married. George Steiner isn't an unmarried woman but he does have a really big hope chest with a lot of good inside for orphans in Russia and Africa.

Steiner is the founder of Children's Hope Chest. He had been working with the International Bible Society and in 1993 visited a Russian orphanage for the first time. In 1995, Children's Hope Chest began operating summer camps for orphans in Russia. In 1998, it opened a family center in the Nizhny Novgorod city of Boldino to provide foster care in a group setting. By 2000, he had enlisted several American churches as sponsors of Russian orphanages, a program that has now grown to more than 40 churches covering 2,400 orphans. It runs ministry centers in Vladimir, Kostroma and Ivanovo to help the teenagers who are aging out of an orphanage, and it has programs for young mothers to keep fragile families together. The small summer camp effort has grown to four camps that now provide a summer respite for 400 orphans every year.

Lisa Finneran, who is running an art contest now to benefit Children's Hope Chest, got acquainted with the group a few years back while reporting a story for her local newspaper. She was just getting her charity, ArkAngels, off the ground and needed a way to put the money it raised to good use in Russia. "I don’t have any connection with orphanages in Russia," she says. "It didn’t make sense for me to go out and reinvent the wheel when they already had it running so well."

Lisa and her husband Mike went to Russia with Children's Hope Chest this past March, visiting orphanages it was aiding in Kostroma and Kirov. "In Kostroma," Lisa says, "Children's Hope Chest has been working for years to improve the facilities and give them alternative education. Those kids are happy. In Kirov, it is just getting started and you can see that in the children's faces."

Lisa's art contest isn't the only bit of creative fundraising for Children's Hope Chest. It seems to inspire a lot of people to do some very interesting things. Over the past year, I've seen news stories on a teenager who raised money by doing some long-distance mountain boarding and a holiday gift sale run by a church in North Carolina. I've seen stories like this one about churches that have sent over groups of parishioners to work with Children's Hope Chest at an orphanage.

You can learn more about Children's Hope Chest's work through its Web site. And if you're the type to check out a philanthropic group's financial management before making a donation, its profile on Charity Navigator is here.

Image credit: Lisa Finneran