Perpetual Change

Hello from Ukraine (again)

So I have returned to the fertile land, in not such a fertile season. I am currently working as a volunteer at an orphanage with 20 boys; I plan to be here until May; they cover all my costs. The boys have a school on site, and we live in a very small village of about 200 people. I had done some work with this orphanage while a Peace Corps volunteer and decided to come back while I still had a good command of the language and knew the boys personally.

Many people have been asking, “But, what do you do?” and I was struggling to give them a good answer. Then it dawned on me; basically, I am a stay home dad. I clean and do laundry, I get the boys cleaned and dressed, I supervise their eating habits, I help them with homework, read and play games with them, and put them to bed at night. My goal is to help the orphanage directors to offer more social skills to the boys, so that when they leave the orphanage, they will succeed. Things like managing money, tending house, and getting a good job. The orphanage will always be there to support them, but they will go out on their own one day – adoption really isn’t an option. In fact, most of them have a legal guardian, who may visit or take them for holidays, but for many different reasons, can’t raise them themselves.

The life of a toy

Some of you have expressed an interest in sending things. Let me first describe what I saw happen to a motorized toy spider (quite cool) this week. It was given by a humanitarian aid organization. It was about 2 days before the boys discovered it; about 30 minutes later, it was broken; the next day, it was completely broken and about 30 minutes after that, it was completely de-assembled, and they were hacking the plastic pieces into bits with scissors. Not really behavior we want to encourage, especially when they get hours of fun out of wood train cars (maybe that is just because they last hours). What I’ll call "cool toys" are really only good if there are 20 of them, and that is a bit ridiculous.

If you do want to send toys, sturdy ones are best. Regarding books and movies, see the next section; as for clothes, we have so many that we don't know where to store them all (you could always come help me build shelves), and the boys are already the best outfitted in the village (not usually a high hurdle, but none the less, we want to stay friendly with the neighbors).

We are looking for some educational computer games, but they should have little English (for studying), no English (like Math games), or at least the English shouldn’t be integral to the play of the game. There is one Color Game Boy that we get out when someone is sick in bed all day. They boys have been running to me, because the only game left is a spy game, and each level has a different mission. They made it through the first 5 by trial and error, but then they got stuck. It’s a bit frustrating.

What I can buy with 18 dollars.

On top of all that, with $18 today, I bought a book of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, the Golden compass trilogy (all in Ukrainian), and 16 animated movies and TV programs (also in Ukrainian). So really the money that it would cost to send something, we can usually buy much more of that thing here, like books, movies, cleaning supplies, clothes, and toys (plus American DVD’s don’t work because they are coded differently).

I am interested in getting a copy of Chris Van Allsburg’s book Jumanji. If you do decide to send this, could you post a comment so that others know. (There are a few other random things that I can’t find here; I forgot my list though, so I will edit this spot later).

Financial Donations

If you would like to donate money, checks are a bit difficult to deal with because right now, we can’t cash them in Ukraine, but they do have an account in Poland that they travel to on occasion. You can make a donation to Miles Jesu, which is the religious brotherhood that runs the orphanage; that is tax deductible; they send us the money about twice a year. The check should be to Miles Jesu and the memo line should say "Bortnyky Boys' Town". The address is:
Miles Jesu
1126 Morse St., apt.1-W
Chicago, IL 60626

If you want faster (but un-official), you can send a check to my parents’ address, they can cash it into my account, and I can withdraw it in local currency here.

I want to take the opportunity to reference the Partnership program, too. This is a Peace Corps grant that is written with community participation. You donate directly to a project (or you can choose to donate to a cause that covers multiple projects) and 100% of the money goes to the project. It is really easy (credit cards accepted), all online (http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors& ), tax-deductible (you get a letter), and by clicking on the projects you can read all about it. They usually are for not very great amounts, so just a few dollars can make a difference. I don't have any projects up there, but they are all good causes, and they change as new ones are posted, so it is worth checking from time to time.

The address anyway
If after all that, you are still reading, and still want my address it is:
John Sheetz
Ditachiy budynok (Children’s Home)
c. Bortnyky
Zhydachivska p-H
Lvivska oblast
Ukraine
81763
Thanks for caring, and reading. I hope you all have a wonderful New Year.

Labels: orphanage

posted by jjs @ 5:12 AM