During the My Life..My City exhibition in St. Petersburg, Kiboko Projects was contacted by Gaoordi, a nonprofit advocacy group for families with challenged children. A twelve-session workshop geared towards this group's specific needs was organized. Initially, five families were invited to view the exhibition and video in the gallery in order to introduce the project. Plaster face masks were then made of family members during visits to their homes. Each family was assigned two students from the St. Petersburg Pedagogical College to assist them in developing a book about the lives of the famlies. In the final session, each family told their stories in soem cases using the masks. These interviews are surprisingly candid. Scheflen, who was welcomed into people’s homes with open arms, witnessed a great degree of emotional honesty: "I was touched by how much love and sensitivity family members displayed towards each other, and how open they were to working with us. One of the reasons the project was successful was because of the trust we were able to develop." From talking to these families and to Alexander Ivanov, the Director of the Gaoordi Institute, he learned of an almost total absence of support and services for families raising physically or emotionally challenged children in Russia. He also realized that these families are often shunned by their neighbors who view their children with superstition and prejudice. In this type of environment, there is little or no emotional outlet. This context makes the following excerpt from an interview with the Stepanets family particularly moving. Father, mother and younger daughter discuss the symbolism of the parents' masks in relation to the older daughter's serious developmental problems:

Father: "On the left side of the mask this column closes the left eye because man mustn't cry. You see, Russian flag is here because I am a military man. It's a symbol of our country."

Mother: "For other people, I always smiled. I never shared my pain or my sadness about my problem with other people. It's the first time I share my problem on this mask. A black square because I look at the world through this square. There is a sun. I hope my children will be happy and the sun will be shining for whole life. This mask shows my pain for my child and the loss of my parents."

Daughter: "There is a lot of pain in our mother's mask. All the pain about her child and it is easy to understand how difficult it is to her to show her child to our society. Our city could not understand her troubles and I think that in America there are also such families and we must understand it." This excerpt from the interview with the Stepanets family also points once more to the importance of video in the workshop process. In this case the final videotaped interview allows participants to complete the self-exploration initiated while making art. It also allows them to communicate their personal experiences directly to American families in similar situations who will participate in the next phase of the project. The work made by these Russian families and exhibited in My City..My Life in St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery will be used as a model and starting point for a similar workshop in New York City. Five families with challenged children will be chosen to participate over the summer and then the project will travel back to St. Petersburg .

The significance of this workshop was emphasized by Alexander Ivanov: "I hope that the project will be a starting point, a stepping stone for the future, bringing together our countries and families. This project is very important from a cultural and artistic point of view, undoubtedly. Yet another side of this project which is probably even more important is that it encourages openness and interaction on the level of families. So if we do that on the level of families that may very well be projected on the level of society. We very much hope that this project will serve as a bridge between a family in Russia and a family in America and a family in Kenya. It will help promote understanding and communication."