Two years ago a group of British volunteers came to visit orphans in the Kalinovka orphanage. This visit has changed my attitude towards bed-ridden children. I started to believe that they can be distracted from their dull reality and hitting themselves. There are ways to do this other than by tying them with three pairs of tights. They can respond to simple touch, communication and of course games.
Last year the same volunteers from England helped me to see that you can also help grownup orphans, who are considered hopeless here. You can even help the ones who lie under the carpet for hours. There is an educator in the Kalinovka who spends months to teach grownup men to hold a toy, catch a ball and just respond to the world around. This project successfully runs thanks to our British friends from Future Youth Project who help us finance the salary of the educator.
This educator whom Happy Child is financing works from Monday to Friday. This means that a caretaker is left completely alone with forty grownup men for the weekend. Half of these men have to be fed by the spoon and wear diapers. All the caretakers are women who can hardly defend themselves in case mentally challenged men attack them. An ordinary woman is surely not a sumo wrestler and she is really unlikely to separate two fighting men.
Our educator can simultaneously have lessons with ten men where even the most aggressive ones become calm if they are busy with something interesting. Like little kids, these men make figures from plasticine, draw or make handicrafts from paper or beads. These men can make many incredible things if someone supports them. That is why we would like to ask you to support our fund-raising campaign, so we can manage the salary of an additional educator for grownup orphans in Kalinovka. We need approximately 3000 hryvnyas (233 US dollars) a month including taxes to manage a monthly wage of the educator. That makes 36,000 hryvnyas (2,790 US dollars) a year.
You are welcome to learn more details about this project by calling me +38 0990235609 or emailing me at mariya.syemashkina@gmail.com
Just think – no one of us knows what will happen tomorrow and where everyone of us will happen to be. Thank you.
