“You are going to the seaside!” – what a nice phrase, full of expectations and colorful images. Summer, and especially July, is a great time for trips to the seaside. During this summer I also had my own and here is my story:  

In the beginning of June I went to a seminar to orphanage K. for children with severe special needs in one of the Southern regions of Ukraine. After the seminar I stayed for a week as a volunteer to help to work with the kids. During this time I was unexpectedly offered to go to the seaside for 21 day with a small group of children from this orphanage. I agreed and had an unforgettable experience – this trip has brought me a lot of joy but also was a real challenge. There were twelve children from 8 to 17 years of age, including a seventeen-year-old young man on a wheelchair and two/three “caregivers” - one nanny (i.e. caregiver), a volunteer who came for a week to help us out and I. 

For a small number of children at the orphanage who were fortunate to get selected to go to the seaside, this trip is probably the only one they make outside of the orphanage in a year or very long time. Others are less fortunate and may never leave it. Such trips do not only allow the “lucky ones” to leave their old tiny playground behind for several weeks but also give them a chance to meet other children and if they are super lucky – develop a friendship.

Although such outings may seem like a fun thing to do for the children, they involve lots of efforts both from kids and from orphanage staff that accompanies them. High child to staff ratio at the orphanage (10:1) and individual health needs of the children preclude staff from effectively teaching children anything except for most basic skills (e.g. self-feeding, toileting, etc). That is why some of the children who are capable of learning do not even know how to play with toys. Also lack of children’s social skills became a challenge both for them and for us at the camp-site where they were around 70 other children and had to interact with them. We had to teach children how to behave in socially acceptable way and they had to learn this as quickly as possible. We all tried our best and reached amazing results by the end of the trip. Another challenge that we had was more of a physical one. The camp-site was not entirely wheelchair accessible that is why an ordinary daily walk to the sea became a real ordeal for a young man in a wheelchair. With our help he had to overcome an 80-steps-down-the-hill and then 150-yards-towards-the-sea-walk in order to enjoy 5 minutes in the water. Then we had to walk back.

I also must admit, that some of the things that I learned from textbooks about children and “proper” methods of their upbringing do not always work. Taking into consideration that you are in the middle of the “chaos” all day long and you are responsible for children almost 24/7--you may experience frequent burn-outs. It becomes extremely difficult to control yourself and your own emotions. We were very relieved when the second volunteer joined us for almost a week when and helped a lot with children. We could finally take short breaks to refresh our own energy and patience and at the same time devote more time for individual needs of children.

In such groups it is really challenging or even impossible to use “teachable moments” to explain to each of the children what one should and should not do, especially when all of the kids are doing something simultaneously. For example, when you are explaining to the 1^st child that he is supposed to play in a safe area with his balloon, the second child is pretending to be a firefighter and is climbing a steep staircase; the third child at this same moment is running with the speed of light away from you in order to see whether you can catch him; the fourth is investigating aerodynamic qualities of his sandals by throwing them as high as he can, not taking into consideration that sooner or later they will fall down on him or his friends.

Maybe we would have had fewer situations like that if only we had more toys when we arrived. We almost did not have any*, except for a one pink ball (that passed away the same day it was introduced to the kids) and a small toy yellow bucket with one small plastic spade and several plastic forms for sand. This yellow bucket happened to be a “miracle worker” for us. The first time the bucket and its content were distributed among the kids, silence descended upon the playground – everyone became extremely quiet and focused on playing in the sand. A miracle!!!

I cannot enumerate all of the everyday challenges that kids and we encountered and it is not necessary. What is more memorable now are the moments when the children were happy, laughing and smiling. I remember everyone's joy when, thanks to the hard work of one of the volunteers, children finally learned how to pass the ball to one another without crying, kicking it or fighting for it. Each day was filled with small battles, small misfortunes and small successes. I think that the children will remember this trip for a very long time, maybe for the rest of their lives. As for me, I understood that I have so much to learn and so much work has to be done on myself as well! Now I’m still having a rest from the seaside and prepare myself for the next adventure.

Sincerely,

Dmytro

*fortunately several days later a new volunteer brought some more