 The Ramsbottom Rotary Family composed of the Rotary, Interact
and newly formed Rotaract clubs, are long term supporters of both
International Aid Trust (IAT) and the Rotary Shoe Box Scheme. The
majority of the members of the Rotaract club are past Interactors
from Ramsbottom. In August a party of ten people representing
the three clubs went to the Ukraine for ten days to see the projects
with which they are involved. The Kiev and Odessa based managers
of IAT arranged a programme that showed many aspects of the charity’s
work in their regions as well as treating the Ramsbottom group
to the tourism side of the beautiful and culturally rich cities.
We were met by Pasha Ozeruga, IAT’s manager in Kiev, and
on the first night went to a meeting of Kiev Rotaract Club who
were also being visited by a delegation from Kiev Centre Rotaract
Club. We received a very warm welcome and a mark of the Rotaractors’ hospitality
was their holding the meeting in English. Ramsbottom Rotaract
President Sian Williams presented a book about Lancashire to the
Kiev Club’s President Sergiy Savin.
The next day was a time of orientation going shopping to the market
on Andrew’s Descent for Russian dolls and other souvenirs,
a boat trip in the River Dnipro followed by a visit to the Cave
Monastery and its catacombs and then on to Pechers'ky Landshaftny
Park. Here there are the flower power decorated pair of Peace
Tanks and the chrome nickel alloy statue of the Motherland that
is over 100 metres high.  Our first visit to IAT’s projects
was at Mirogrod some 200 miles to the east of Kiev where there
is a camp for about 120 children and their helpers set in pine
forest. From the buildings a few minutes walk through playing
fields and meadows leads to a sandy beach and stream where the
campers can swim. For the campers from impoverished and often
urban backgrounds across the Ukraine, Mirogrod is the stuff of
childhood holiday memories. There was a very happy atmosphere
and we met many laughing children dressed in the clothes they received
on arrival. With signs and a few words, the five Ramsbottom
Interactors and one Rotaractor communicated with the campers as
they toured the main building. It helped greatly that English
is taught at Ukrainian schools. At the open-air theatre we
were entertained by children and helpers putting on an instructional
show for the campers. For our part the Ramsbottom entertainments
team used the “parachute” we had brought to teach the
campers a variety of games in the forest. Mirogrod is one
of eight camps run by IAT that together received 4000 children
and their helpers for a two-week holiday last summer.
 The Ramsbottom youngsters had collected money to be used charitably
during the trip. The first demonstration of how far money
goes was at a cash and carry buying basic food for sponsored families
and citrus fruit for a children’s home. The large trolley
load only cost about £40 but we met many people living below
the breadline. IAT operate a family sponsorship scheme whereby
all the money from a donor is given to the family. In a land
where there is a high incidence of family strife resulting from
cheap alcohol, drugs, ill health or bereavement the link with the
IAT family support team and the money from a sponsor provides the
difference between despair and hope. Visiting families we
were given warm welcomes by people who were materially poor but
thankful for what they had and chose to share it. The Ramsbottom
group had brought a supply of toys and gifts from England that
we gave to people during our visits.
At Doroginka, a village near Kiev, IAT are restoring and enlarging
a building bought for just over £2000 which will be home
to about 40 rescued street children. Building work has been
delayed on occasions through lack of funds but it is hoped that
the home will be ready before winter sets in. Apart from
lack of availability of land in the city, IAT believe moving children
into the country makes it easier for them to start new lives. Having
see the before structure we saw the after structure at Motovilufka,
a modern building in another village that is home to 33 children
who were open and sociable. The Ramsbottom teenagers played
basketball with their Ukrainian counterparts in the grounds of
the home.
Our final appointment of the day was in Boyarka, a small town
near Kiev, where we visited a drugs rehabilitation centre run by
IAT. The patients self refer and the centre claims an amazing
50% plus success rate. Our host at the centre, Segei, told
his story of becoming an addict and how he recovered and chose
to remain at the centre to help others. We were shown a harrowing
video of drug users in subhuman surroundings who had almost come
to end of their lives and were barely recognisable as human beings. The
drugs education team takes the video to schools.
 During our time in Kiev members of our group had had conversations
with many people and heard their accounts of life under communist
rule and what it was like on the streets during the Orange Revolution
a year and a half before.
On Sunday we went to a church that was filled by over 300 people
and, as is expected of visitors, told the congregation about our
visit. Under Rotarian Jim Hurst’s guidance and guitar
accompaniment we sang some Christian songs. Soon it was time
to catch the night train to Odessa.
Odessa is known as the Pearl of the Black Sea. It is a beautiful
city with an atmosphere that is more Mediterranean than Slavic. Our
walking tour included the Opera House, Deribasovskaya Street and
the Potemkin Steps passing Pushkin’s statue and many others. Next
day we resumed our project work by visiting a sponsored family
on our way to Myaki which is an IAT camp near the Black Sea. At
Myaki we turned into entertainers as Jim Hurst taught the 120 or
so campers songs and the Interactors demonstrated team games that
the campers then played. Having split the children into groups
we set up a series of bases using play equipment we had brought. The
groups then rotated around the bases until a short cloudburst halted
the games. Many of the campers were from Belarus having
travelled on a coach or train for two days to reach the coast. As
the storm approached the camp staff were keen to get the Belarussian
children indoors for fear that the undernourished and sickly youngsters
might catch colds. Conversely, the campers wanted to look
at the rain because they had not seen any for months. When
the sun came out again the Ramsbottom teenagers made more friends
as they cooled off on the waterslide and pool.
The following day we shopped for essential food that we took to
a state-funded children’s home called Gnezdishko for young
children. Then we relaxed by eating lunch in a traditional
Ukrainian restaurant before going on a boat trip around the harbour. The
majority of our group was young ladies so it was important to include
a shopping experience in the programme. The 7th km market
is a 170 acre open-air collection of shipping containers and stalls
founded in 1989 after the collapse of Communism. One commentator
has written “the market is part third-world bazaar, part
post-Soviet Wal-Mart, a place of unadulterated and largely unregulated
capitalism”. The result was a set of satisfied shoppers.
 Back to “work”. Tatyana Kolomiets, the IAT manager
in Odessa, had arranged a lunch meeting at the Good Samaritan church
for us to meet representatives of organisations that received Rotary
shoeboxes. Amongst those who spoke about their work and the
enormous impact of shoeboxes were IAT’s staff who distribute
humanitarian aid, a pastor from another church who visits prisons
and AIDS hospitals, the Deputy Director of the prison service for
the Odessa region and a project worker who befriends some of the
estimated 5 to 10,000 street children in the city. After
lunch I had brief meetings with people from three other groups
that receive Rotary shoeboxes; the Red Cross, an organisation that
helps disabled, often elderly, people plus their families and an
organisation that arranges a gala for disabled swimmers. It
is difficult to fully describe the emotions shown by people when
they receive their shoebox. A measure was the statement by
the pastor who visits the remand centre for 14 to 18 year olds
where as a result of IAT sponsoring teachers and the young offenders
receiving shoeboxes, the suicide level had dropped to almost zero.
A feature of each visit the Ramsbottom group made to a children’s
home, a family or a children’s camp was the distribution
by the Interactors of Rotary shoeboxes from the stocks delivered
to IAT in the spring. As one of the Interactors who has filled
boxes and sorted boxes in the warehouse put it “I have seen
so many photographs of shoeboxes being handed out but the pictures
cannot properly convey the joy of people receiving their boxes”. Conveying
that joy is a challenge that the management of the Rotary Shoe
Box Scheme wrestles with regularly.
Our next visit was to the museum of Stalin’s repressed people
where we met a large roomful of lively minded pensioners whose
parents had been killed by Stalin. There was so much life
and history in this group of survivors and so little time available
in our busy programme to talk with them. They broke into
spontaneous applause when our teenagers were introduced, the reason
being their pleasure in receiving a group of foreign students who
were interested in learning about a forgotten part of history. Their
museum contains photographs and personal items of people who were
killed for being individual or had been victims of lying informants. A
wall map of the Soviet Empire contains numerous coloured pins across
the communist bloc each one representing an administrative unit
of nine gulags. It is a powerful reminder of the number of
dissidents who were taken away during the Terror.
Khadjibey, the camp that IAT has recently purchased after renting
for a number of years, was out last major visit of the trip. Once
again the Ramsbottom entertainments team clicked into action. The
significance of going to Khadjibey is that within the beautiful
site are the fruits of the international Rotary Centenary project
for Ramsbottom Rotary and Interact clubs along with our twin clubs
in Morehead City, North Carolina and Trutnov in the Czech Republic. The
project was the conversion of part of a building into two self-contained
apartments called Christina’s homes for sponsored families. We
met the families and were shown around their homes. The money
has been used very effectively.
Each member of the harmonious Ramsbottom party went home with
a bundle of memories, a collection of addresses, increased knowledge
and respect for the highly effective work of IAT. One of
the many things that impressed the Ramsbottom adults was the wisdom
of the Interactors and Rotaractor shown during their discussions
to decide from an abundance of possibilities how to spend their
charity fund, which was then applied in five directions.
It was three years since I was in Kiev and Odessa. There
is now much construction work going on in the cities which are
appearing more prosperous but very little has changed in the country
where although many homes have electricity, few have running water
and life is a hand to mouth affair. The quality of city life
depends on whether a person has a good job or is reliant on any
of the very meagre welfare payments that the state can make. In
those three years the Orange Revolution has come and gone. Overall
I think progress is being made by the Ukraine but not in a straight
line. There will be the need for much charitable work there
for many more years.
Peter
Clare |
