Summer 2005: Volunteers' reports

Panayiotis Xenophontos:

Every year, a three week summer camp is run with the aid of both international and Russian volunteers at the internat. The 2005 camp was run by volunteers from Russia (graduate teachers from Pskov and students from Moscow), Great Britain (undergraduate and already graduated students from Oxford University) and France (students from Sciences-Po and Paris 1). There were 17 volunteers in total. The supervisor of the camp was Sergei Ivanovich Moichuk, a ROOF employee.

Classes were taught by groups of two-three volunteers. Each group included at least one native Russian speaker and one Russian speaking foreign student. I was the Russian speaking foreign student in my group, alongside one Russian boy of 22 years old. Each groups of volunteers worked with 3-4 groups of children each day. Each group of children received lessons from 2 different groups of volunteers per day Each group of children therefore received 3 to 4 hours of teaching each day

As a result, the teaching was sometimes based upon manual activities as a way to introduce new formal and abstract concepts. Role play and theatre also proved to be an efficient and fun way of getting the children to understand the importance of certain skills in everyday life: how much change must the vendor give back to me? Other activities were less linked to everyday life but were very important in the development of coordination, concentration and self-expression.

Some of the aims of the camp were to develop concepts of:

Self and the surrounding environment - where is Belskoye Ustye situated in the region? In Russia? In the continent? In the world? As well as this, geographical concepts such as explaining the differences between a village, a town, capital city, and country were developed. Relationship to people - learning how to respect others. Orientation in time - how to tell the time, what season are, what years are, how you can tell the difference between different times of the year, etc.

These concepts were developed through activities including: drawing, working with plasticine, painting, playing various outdoor and indoor games involving work in teams, story telling etc.

Saying this though, many volunteers helped children work through mathematics sheets, helped them with reading and pronouncing Russian words, phrases and sentences, helped them write letters, words, phrases and sentences, as well as having discussions with them about topics such as geography, different languages and cultures from around the world etc. In other words, some lessons did involve children sitting down behind desks and working.

As well as normal working days with the children, there were other ‘special events’ punctuating our weeks at the internat, including:

Numerous celebration days, ‘prazdniki’- Day of Neptune, Day of Ivan Kupala, Sports Day.

Exhibition of the children’s work done during the camp. This took place at the end of camp in the internat gymnasium. This is a very important day in the camp not only for the children, but also for the carers, the director of studies and the psychologist. The children can proudly show off their work to their peers and their carers. The administration of the internat can be shown the progress made by the children, allowing them to reassess their own views about what the children are and are not capable of doing.

Disco - held twice.

Final show by the children - here, the children danced, some played musical instruments and some sang. They had worked hard to prepare this show and were very proud to show off their talents to volunteers and carers alike.

Final show by the volunteers - an opportunity to give something back to the children in the form of a Pushkin fairy tale we performed as a play named, ‘The Tale of the dead Tsarevna and the Seven Bogatyrs.’

The volunteers were in charge of their lesson plans which they thought up according to their own abilities and the abilities of the children, as well as the receptiveness of the children to certain lessons or activities. If a certain game was successful one day, then there was no reason not to repeat it in the future.

The children learnt that acquiring intellectual and social skills can be a rewarding experience that opens up possibilities for the future. This is of great importance as without education, orphans reaching the age of 18 would simply lead the rest of their lives in adult institutions.

There was also an informal meeting over tea between the staff of the internat at the end of the camp, a valuable opportunity for us to thank them, and for them to thank us for the work put in over the course of the camp. This not only marked the great progress in the cooperation between the administration of the internat and ROOF, but was also an opportunity for the internat staff and volunteers to share impressions and views on the children and the internat in general.

Loretta Platts:

As a returning volunteer from England, it was good to see how much the children appreciated and had looked forward to the summer camp. We organized lots of different activities for the children as a fun way to help educate them. As we mainly interacted with the children in their groups, we certainly developed our teaching skills to keep them all busy and enjoying themselves.

It's clear that, although the children have their difficulties, most are capable of being educated to a reasonable standard and all have the potential to develop a lot through education. I wish ROOF and the children all the best in the coming year and thank all the staff at the orphanage for their hard work and support. Thank you also to our sponsors in England for your financial assistance.

We thank Tchibo and Ernst&Young whose contribution has made this camp possible and so successful.

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