About Us

Little Hearts International (LHI), a U,S-based 501c3 organization, is the successor organization of Russian Gift of Life (RGOLUSA) founded in 1989. Initially a volunteer auxiliary to the Rotary Gift of Life, created in 1975 to provide life-saving heart surgery to children from developing countries. The first child from the Soviet Union arrived for open heart surgery in November 1989.  Volunteers provided non-clinical logistical support as well as emotional and spiritual to children. After 1991 children from the countries that had been part of the Soviet Union including Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Ukraine were brought to the Unites States for surgery.

In 1991, RGOLUSA was incorporated as a separate nonprofit entity. Thanks to a bequest, made by Tatiana Guevorguian in memory of her son Andre, killed in the Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, the organization expanded its work to include sponsoring medical training missions to regional pediatric cardiac centers. The organization partnered with several organizations which sent volunteer medical teams to provide free pediatric cardiac surgeries, training, and medical resources to develop regional sustainable pediatric cardiac centers enabling them to perform increasingly complex surgeries locally.

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Today, LHI focuses on aid to children in Ukraine as well as to children in Eurasia. Our medical equipment program sources and provides specialized pediatric cardiac medical devices, instruments, and equipment, such as special surgical eyeglasses, portable echocardiograms, and pediatric replacement heart valves.

To date, LHI and its precursor organization has helped save the lives of several thousand children.