Thanks to the support of Jonathan Pylypov, 12 high school students aged 13+ from orphanages in the city of Ternopil, the village of Nove Selo and the city of Berezhan had another opportunity to learn new and interesting things this year.
Coach Rostyslav Rudensky taught the children about skills and abilities, in particular how to understand and distinguish between these two concepts, noting that even adults can get confused about the difference. Children participated enthusiastically in interactive tasks and discussions in the session.
The second half of the day was dedicated to making Christmas cookies. A wonderful master class was given by our volunteers from the USA, Tiffany and Tyson, who are visiting Ternopil and providing considerable help to Ternopil residents during this difficult time for Ukraine. The children created tasty products that they enjoyed eating while listening to Christmas music.
Preparing orphans by teaching them the social skills and how to adapt to the reality of independent life is a high priority for "On the threshold of independent life" program”, which has been run by the team and partners of the charity fund "Future of Orphans" for the last 10 years. Each visit of 12-14 participants from orphanages to the city of Ternopil with overnight accommodation and food, costs from UAH 4,000 to UAH 6,000. We are grateful to all our coaches, restaurants, and companies who actively engage with the charity finding time to teach the children important lessons and skills.
On Sunday, the children were invited to join a new project "Tillie and Tomsey's Journey" initiated by Paul, a volunteer from Great Britian. The project aims to help foreigners learn to speak Ukrainian. We hope that the children will find the project interesting and be able to be useful to our friends from abroad.
As in every training weekend, participants were divided into three teams and given tasks such as designing a menu for the weekend, making a list of groceries needed to prepare these dishes, purchasing the ingredients from the supermarket within a budget, preparing meals, and cleaning and washing dishes after after everyone had eaten.
We express our gratitude to Ternopil, Nove Selo and Berezhana care institutions for understanding the importance of socialising the pupils. This is the only project in Ukraine that has been implemented consistently for 10 years in a row with this goal and in this manner. The Department of Education and Science of TOVA thanks them for their support and assistance.
Without a team of like-minded people who every weekend help children understand themselves and the world around them, this would not be possible, and for that we thank Volodymyr Yavorsky, Zoryana Vitushynska, Andriy Nazarenko.
