Greetings from Perm!
Welcome to an extra special, extra long newsletter! We hope you enjoy catching up on the last few months of news…
New Year, New Start
New Year in Russia is the biggest celebration of the year, and is celebrated on many different levels – for the family it is the main time for giving presents, sharing time with your close ones and enjoying the wealth of winter sports and activities that are on offer at this time. For many children living in poverty there is not much to celebrate. The long national holidays ensure heavy drinking, which often results arguments and violence. During this time many children and teenagers would rather go to the streets than stay at home, which is why at Love’s Bridge it is a particularly busy time of year…
We had invited all the children and teenagers who had come to the centre regularly over the course of the year and awaited our relatively small centre being flooded with a sea of excited guests. Ten minutes before the start the guests had started to arrive but the stars of the show were nowhere to be seen. Two of our older teens, Max and Mikhail, had spent the last two months rehearsing their part in the show for the kids.
The rehearsals had been a challenge from the start – the two stars lacked confidence and there had been ups and downs all the way, with fears of them dropping out followed by demonstrations of dedication which stunned us all.
The big night had finally arrived, and with five minutes to go we were on the verge of panic and ready to implement our back-up plan (two very unprepared members of staff). At the last second the two boys appeared sheepishly at the entrance of the centre. There was an unspoken understanding between us all that there was no need to ask any questions, just gave the boys their costumes and with a slight delay and huge relief we could finally start the show.
Needless to say, the teenagers were a huge success and did us all proud. The kids at the party were thrilled seeing their own contemporaries playing such a role and we realized that with patience and courage we can all overcome our fears and achieve anything we want.
All the children received individual gifts thanks to our dedicated supporters and volunteers in Ireland, and our local volunteer DJ Tim provided us with an unforgettable disco.
We would like to express our enormous thanks to all those who made this day so special for the kids at Love’s Bridge – we will all remember it for some time to come!
Raising Awareness
We already have a number of people who are planning to hold a Love’s Bridge awareness event, but we’d love even more people to take part! Just to remind you, the idea is for supporters around the world to organize an event on the weekend of May 30th to raise awareness of what Love’s Bridge does. Some ideas for events:
- Showing the new Love’s Bridge film to some friends and telling them why you support us
- Making some traditional Russian snacks and setting up a stall at work/school with LB info available
- Inviting some friends to a Russian-themed party or dinner with the help of our Russian Party Guide
- Organizing a charity concert
- Hosting a Russian quiz
- Come up with your own original way to raise awareness or funds for Love’s Bridge
Please get in touch if you are interested in hosting an event and we will send you the new promo DVD and other information!
A Marathon Effort
One Love’s Bridge supporter came up with his own way to raise money and awareness for the project. In April Rob Foulkes ran the Paris Marathon in just under three and a half hours – a fantastic effort! Thank you Rob for raising over $2000 for Love’s Bridge as well as making many more people aware of our work!
School… But no lessons
Yulia, our new Center Manager, wanted to share the story of our latest project with our supporters…
Towards the end of the school term, we quite often have children and teenagers approaching us requesting help with their schoolwork before exams. We realized that during term time the kids paid very little attention to their studies and didn’t even want to think about trying to improve their poor grades. It soon became clear that many of our kids were having huge problems in school – at best kids were getting bottom grades and not even trying to do anything about it, and at worst kids were being held back at the end of the year or dropping out of school completely.
We soon understood that we needed to do much more than just help at the last minute, and get the kids to take an active interest in their studies. It was then that the idea of “School Without Classes” was born. It would be a program that completely differed from the monotonous tone of a school teacher, where the kids themselves would take an active role in the “classroom”, and learn through fun activities, games and excursions.
We enlisted the help of volunteers – students from local universities, who became “big brothers” and “big sisters” for all the participants of the program, helping individuals with specific subjects and encouraging the kids to persevere with their studies. The students proved ideal for the kids – their lively and enthusiastic classes were a far cry from the dull lessons which the kids find so hard to sit through at school.
One day Lena, one of the participants, came up to me and began to tell me about how her individual mentoring class had been going. She had been studying English with her mentor, and told me how she had been given an ‘A’ in English for the first time ever. She told me that her teacher had been in shock at giving her this mark, and she herself was in complete shock! She told about how she wasn’t just happy that she had shocked her teacher but had actually developed an interest in English and had started to think about how it might help her in her adult life.
Lena’s story was the first of many such small rewards from the program. We started to note that the kids’ attitude towards studies was gradually changing – they came to the centre with their textbooks and did their homework independently in the centre. We hope that this will become a tradition for children who don’t have a quiet place to do their homework and need the inspiration and support to strive to improve their studies.
Supporting the Home Team
This year we gathered as usual with the kids and teenagers to celebrate the Russian festival maslenitsa, or butter week, which marks the beginning of the Orthodox lent. This festival also marks the end of the long Russian winter, and pancakes represent the sun and the start of the comparatively warm weather! The kids were all in great form, and we were all relieved to finally be able to get out of the centre and spend some time in the fresh air. Spring is a good time to start new plans, make changes in your life and give yourself perspective on what has happened over the last year.
We were pleasantly surprised on this warm spring day by the initiative and team work of our kids. At the maslenitsa festival several team games were organized, including a competition for the loudest person and a five-a-side soccer match. At first the kids were not too keen about taking part in the competition, but after one or two of the older kids started infecting everyone with their enthusiasm, we soon had participants taking part in the loudest person competition and had a team together for the soccer match. The staff together with the remaining kids were the loudest supporters on the field, and to the great joy of all the Love’s Bridge team, we won the soccer competition! It is unfortunately a rare and occasional sight to see the kids pulling together in such a way – many of them are used to depending on themselves and find it hard to work in a team. Moments like these prove to us that the work we do with the kids and teenagers of Perm really does impact lives and changes attitudes. Well done to the Love’s Bridge soccer team!