Den’ was the first newspaper to report, in 2005, on the launch of the project to build a SOS Children’s Village in the town of Brovary, Kyiv oblast. It was believe that before long families would be able to move into specially built houses. As it was the project took four years.
Why is it so hard to carry out such projects for vulnerable children in Ukraine? After all, we can learn from the 60-years’ worth of experience of the SOS Kinderdorf International (SOS KDI), a reputed international non-profit and religiously non-affiliated organization that successfully protects the interests, rights, and needs of vulnerable children in 132 countries.
The first Children’s Villages Association was founded in Austria and the first SOS Children’s Village in Imst by Hermann Gmeiner in 1949. He dedicated his life to the cause of protecting children who were victims of the Second World War. This experience has proved its worth across the world, in both the developed and Third World countries. What is slowing down this project in Ukraine? Oleksandr POLISHCHUK, the SOS Children Village’s director, answered The Day’s questions on the site where the construction is drawing to an end.
The developer promised to complete the project within a year. Why did it then take four years instead?
“The Children’s Village project was worked out by the SOS KDI’s construction department and had to be approved by and coordinated with various Ukrainian architecture and construction authorities. Problems started cropping out from the outset and then in various phases. These were solved with the help of a number of people and structures. Let me remind you that our Children’s Village was funded and equipped with SOS KDI money—in other words, with the money that millions of people abroad paid out of their wages to help young orphans.
“The City Council of Brovary undertook the task of allocating a three-hectare parcel of land, doing the project’s technical paperwork and engineering works, and providing the overall support to the project. In fact, the project was saved two years ago by our famous boxer Vitali Klitschko and his charitable foundation—owing to his efforts and his faction in the Kyiv City Council we were given 90,000 euros to pay the fee the state charged us for the land.
“Electricity—installing the lines—was the main reason for holding back this project (this problem has been actually solved). In fact, inflation and other increasing expenses during the project have taken away from us a whole village house, so we have 13 rather than 14 such houses. The ceremony of launching the SOS Children’s Village will take place in early October 2009. We expect a number of friends, guests, sponsors, and officials—above all SOS KDI President Helmut Kutin—to attend it.”
These two-story buildings in the forest appear very attractive, but a closer look reveals that they are too small, with kitchenettes (with hardly enough room for two, let alone a family), steep and narrow stairs, and without drainpipes. Will they be kept warm in winter?
“There are countless SOS KDI projects, including plush villages built in the 1980s and the 1990s (with 300–400 square meters of floor space, tiled roofing, etc.). But let’s think about the essence of our project. It is aimed at raising parentless children as healthy individuals who will be fully adjusted to modern realities.
“SOS KDI does more than just care for such children while they live in these villages—it keeps track of them for the rest of their lives, sharing their joys and sorrows and helping them with their problems. Children raised by SOS KDI say they have not always been to secure for themselves equally comfortable living conditions.
SOS FAMILIES WILL LIVE IN COTTAGES LIKE THESE
“And so the SOS KDI village construction concept was revised. What we need is simplicity, modesty, and integration (into a given social environment). There is everything one needs to live a normal life: a total of 128 square meters of floor space, comfortable furniture, good-quality household appliances, computers for the children, and quality German-made boilers to keep these houses warm in winter. It is important for us to make every such building a home for a SOS KDI family, where children can be raised, where they can grow up and learn to share their joys and sorrows, and help solve each other’s problems.”
Before moving into this Village, the children have to live in rented apartments. How many of these children do you have? What orphanages s are they from?
“There are 36 children aged between one and sixteen years in our care. These are very good children, although each has his or her life story of suffering and misunderstanding. Gradually, they thaw out in a warm family atmosphere we are trying to maintain. We have nine SOS families and they all are looking forward to moving in the Village. These children were placed in our care by social services in various raions of Kyiv oblast, also in Brovary and Kyiv. Some of these children were transferred from children’s homes, while others were abandoned by their parents or found themselves parentless due to other reasons.”
Did your SOS mothers and their assistants receive any kind of training?
“Being a SOS mother means being on 24-hour duty. It is a hard and responsible job that requires a great deal of energy, good health, and above all—love for children and the ability to accept them the way they are. It is important for the SOS mothers to go about their job professionally, applying their knowledge of pedagogy, psychology, household management, bookkeeping, and first aid, as well as their experience (each SOS mother takes a two-yearn training course).
“It is also important to be a successful individual. How can you raise children without being a successful individual? Sometimes one’s own experience is not suitable for these children and can even be harmful. SOS mothers are helped in dealing with these problems by the Village’s support system (social instructors, social workers, psychologists, speech therapists, instructors specializing in handicapped children) and by experts from outside (psychotherapists of the Ukraine’s Professional Association of Children’s Psychoanalysts with whom we closely cooperate and to whom we are very grateful for their invaluable assistance).”
How do your children adjust? How do they get along with each other? How are the duties assigned? Do older children help their SOS mothers?
“When transferred to the SOS Village, the children undergo what we call the adaptive period. Depending on the circumstances, it can last between three months and a year when a child gets accustomed to his/her SOS mother and family. By the way, we never separate biological brothers and sisters. Of course, there can be problems, like in any family: misunderstandings, fights, hurt feelings, etc. The main thing is to understand what kind of help and support —medical, health-related, educational, or psychological—a child needs during the adaptive period.
“Children most often start by making up for their previous meager diets, considering that for many a three-course meal at a properly laid table was an exception rather than rule. Children learn to live a normal life, with clean bed linen, personal effects that they buy with their mother, with their own keys to the apartment, and so on.
“SOS mothers and our experts are working on shaping every child’s needs and aspirations. All observations are recorded, marking every phase in the children’s development. For example, we received our first children on July 28, 2006: girls aged 2 and 14. The older one spent six years in a boarding school for mentally retarded children. We arranged for her to be examined by a board of physicians and psychologists. The child turned out to be normal but pedagogically neglected, and there were no indications for institutionalization.
“After two years we succeeded in bringing the girl to the level of our other children, solving a number of psychological and educational problems, and helping her receive a secondary school certificate as an external student. Today she is 16 and a good college student.
“The other child was transferred from a hospital department for infectious diseases, where she had spent over a year (not because she had such a disease but because there was no other room at the hospital). She had rickets and was retarded. After two years in a SOS family she turned into a pretty and clever child. Not so long ago she won an all-Ukrainian poetic competition.
“I could tell you about each of our children. They have all made incredible progress, discovering for themselves the surrounding world and creating their own inner one.”
Who models family relationships, and how is it done?
“The SOS mother is the key figure in building the family, relationships between the children, and guiding their progress. She is assisted by experts if she needs their help. Our children remember their past and know about their biological parents. Of course, the pain of loss or even betrayal abates with time. They find in their new SOS mother the kind of love and dedication they needed so badly but didn’t have.
“Relationships with their biological parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts vary. We encourage their desire to visit and take part in the process of upbringing, unless such contacts are damaging to the child. Regrettably, they often try to alleviate their pain of loss and pangs of conscience or blame the innocent child or SOS mother. There are various examples. Some grandmothers send gifts to their grandchildren and try to take them to visit with them on holidays, while others keep writing complaints to various agencies, even to the President of Ukraine and Prosecutor General’s Office, accusing the Village’s staff of various transgressions—for example, that we plan to sell a child’s organs. Sheer ravings! Yet we were interrogated for days by law enforcement authorities before they made sure we had no such intentions and that the whole thing was the figment of that child’s relative’s imagination. There are also horrible cases when parents never visit their children or treat them like strangers.”
Your SOS Village is located in a forest. How will the children get to school and hobby groups? Will they be accompanied?
“This forest is actually within city limits. Brovary has a developed social infrastructure: 10 schools and gymnasiums specializing in various fields, a sports college (by the way, among its graduates are the Klitschko brothers), several swimming pools, a number of hobby groups, and extracurricular and preschool institutions.
“The City Council is being very helpful; all our children are enrolled free of charge. We do not strive to enroll our children in grade or nursery school closest to the Village. It is important that our children attend various schools, hobby groups, and sports clubs, visit schoolmates and friends, and invite them over to the Village. Our elder children will get to school using public transport and the younger ones will be taken there by a minibus (we still have to buy one and are looking for sponsors).”
Who determines the family and Village budget?
“The Village budget is adopted by the SOS KDI based on the realities in Ukraine, our subsistence level, budget appropriations for young orphans, consumer prices, and inflation rate. By the way, foreign sponsors who visit can’t understand why it is so difficult to find philanthropists willing to make donations to children in need.
“We receive aid in terms foodstuffs, clothes (secondhand, as a rule). We are happy to know that there are philanthropists, among them the Vlada Lytovchenko Foundation “Gifted Children: Ukraine’s Future.” It holds monthly competitions, screenings, meetings with interesting people, and it has presented us with computers and books. Our prominent soccer player Andrii Shevchenko is our FIFA envoy and we cooperate with his foundation.
“True, there are sponsors who remember about orphans only on the eve of New Year, Christmas, and International Child Protection Day. Then they bring heaps of stuffed toys, chocolates, and disappear until the next such date. Don’t get me wrong: we are grateful for any kind of aid, but when there is the pressing issue of paid medical treatment of children (eyesight, dentistry, or psychotherapy) no sweets will solve it!
“With regard to the so-called family budget—money allocated for food, clothes, and so on, including pocket money for children over seven years of age—the SOS mother receives per every child a sum equal to up to twice the subsistence level. All the other payments are made from the Village budget. In 2007–08 we received family budget money from the Kyiv Regional Council, but this funding was suspended in 2009 and has not been resumed.”
The SOS Village in Brovary is the first one of its kind in Ukraine. Are there plans for other such villages?
“SOS KDI plans to provide various kinds of aid to one million children across the world before 2016. The International Charitable Foundation SOS Children’s Village of Ukraine envisages the launch of projects aimed at helping orphans and children in adopted and foster families for the next couple of years in Luhansk, the Crimea, and Zaporizhia. At present, the forms and context of these programs are being studied.”
