Summer camps teach life skills to Ukraine's children (10/22/00)

Summer camps teach life skills to Ukraine's children

by Bohdan Lysyj

WARREN, Mich. - For the past five years, Help Us Help the Children, a non-profit foundation with branches in Canada, Ukraine and the United States, has been organizing summer camps for children from Ukraine's "internaty" - state-run children's homes. This year on August 4-20, 350 children between the ages of 12 and 17 from 35 internaty throughout Ukraine attended a summer camp in the beautiful Carpathian Mountains, in the town of Vorokhta, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.

The camp's location is striking distance from Ukraine's highest peak, Hoverlia, at 2,060 meters, and near such scenic towns as Yaremche and Kosiv. The campers were housed in facilities normally used to house athletes during training: Baza Avanthard, home to Ukraine's national ski jump team, and Baza Ukraina, home to Ukraine's national biathlon team.

Children from internaty are often orphans, or come from highly dysfunctional families - alcohol or drug-addicted parents, parents in jail, abusive family members, extreme poverty. Children from these families are often sent to live in a state-run children's home for years at a time. Many live there until the completion of high school, after which they are discharged, often, literally, onto the street, with very little in the way of support and life skills.

The summer camp programs organized by Help Us Help the Children include workshops intended to improve personal life skills: the ability to make decisions, solve problems, negotiate, communicate, cooperate with others. Discussions and activities focus on ethics, responsibility, tolerance, respect for others, as well as Ukrainian tradition and culture. Campers are also given practical information about topics such as hygiene and nutrition, and job search tools. The camp activities are geared towards building independence, self-sufficiency, self-esteem and confidence in these adolescents.

In 1999 an additional camp was added, with a program specifically designed for 50 of the oldest and most mature of the children, emphasizing leadership and service. This leadership camp was located near the summit of Mahora, in a fairly primitive setting, and the activities were more challenging, including a 43-kilometer, 15-hour hike up Pip Ivan, as well as organizing a large-scale orienteering competition for teams from Baza Ukraina and Baza Avanthard.

The staff for these camps is as varied as the children: volunteers from Canada, the United States and Ukraine; members who have experience in youth groups such as ODUM, Plast and SUM, as well as volunteers from the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

Besides the summer camps, Help Us Help the Children organizes semi-annual outreach missions in the autumn and spring that travel to Ukraine with supplies for the internaty. The organization raises funds and collects donations of gently used clothing, bicycles, toys, sporting goods and camping gear for these missions.

The foundation also sponsors talented young adults from the internaty to attend the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Last year three students who passed the university's rigorous admissions standards received scholarships from the foundation. As part of its fund-raising efforts, the organization holds a telethon each year in Toronto. In the United States, the foundation's next fund-raiser, a silent auction, will be held in Detroit on November 18.

For more information about the organization and its activities, please contact Vera Petrusha at (810) 756-5283 (evening). To make a tax-deductible donation to the foundation, please send your contribution to: Help Us Help the Children Inc., 4511 Bernice, Warren, MI 48091.

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