What started with Patch Adams and his tour of clowns once a year in November so many years ago has now grown into a regular and rewarding clown “culture” that is integral to the Maria’s Children Organization.  Many of the children have become experts at "clowning" around; one was even hired as a regular clown at the Starlite Diner, one of our sponsors!  We’re not surprised, considering we have been given so many opportunities in and around Moscow to practice having fun.

Generally, we try to plan at least two or three trips a year that include at least 30 children, volunteers and teachers together.  On such trips, we try and organize/plan for drawing, tours, and visits to hospitals as a large group.  Such trips are very important for the children involved, since clowning in general focuses different ways to interact with people, and also provides a lot of creative improvisation.  On some trips we purposely organize the children into teams to work on murals; this helps overcome the de facto segregation that we sometimes encounter at the studio amongst the different groups of children from different orphanages.  Clown tours represent their chance to open up, make new friends, and to work together for a good cause.  Please join us!  The more the merrier!

In these pages of our book you can read about some our trips.