For children to recover from emotional wounds

We are organising this summer camp in Poland because we want to help Belarusian and Ukrainian children recover from emotional wounds, help them adapt and integrate into the Polish community.

A summer camp is being organised for young people whose parents have suffered repression and war. And you can help.

"Children find emigrating harder than adults"

- Forced emigration is a great stress, not every adult can cope with its challenges. What to say about children," says Olga Zazulinskaya, co-organiser of the Humanitarian Ambulance Service and head of the Country to Live In Foundation.

We are organising this camp in Poland because we want to help Belarusian and Ukrainian children recover from psychological wounds, help them adapt and integrate into the Polish community.
It is planned to invite 30 children: 10 Belarusian, 10 Ukrainian and 10 Polish. On the Belarusian side they are children of political prisoners, on the Ukrainian side - children of those who died at the front or are still fighting.

"And we decided to invite Polish teenagers to help us relax, to explain what Polish culture and the Polish community are - not on an adult level, but on their own, childish level".

Double trauma

- The children of Belarusian political prisoners have experienced a lot, they are traumatised both by the events in Belarus and by the challenges of unplanned emigration, - says Olga Zazulinskaya. - Many of them have seen their parents arrested, cruelly treated and searched. It's hard for children to go through this because they don't know how to defend themselves.

In a new country, in a new place, new problems arise: often it is the non-acceptance of our children by the Polish community. Therefore, the period of adjustment for traumatised children is very long. The children of Belarusian political prisoners were traumatised twice.

The same goes for Ukrainian children who have experienced the horrors of war and emigration. And it is hard to see these doubly traumatised children fighting among themselves.

There is bullying in educational institutions and, unfortunately, political clashes with Ukrainian children," says Anna Konovalova, whose daughter and son-in-law are now in prison in Belarus while she raises her grandchildren in Poland. - And the older a child is, the harder it is for them to adapt. I can see it with my granddaughter: her granddaughter tolerates emigration quite well, but her grandson, who is older, has a much harder time.

"It is important for children to make friends"

Unfortunately, both Belarusian and Ukrainian children face bullying and ethnic harassment from time to time, things happen," the interviewee continues. - There are cases where Ukrainian children are not very friendly towards Belarusian children. But it's not their fault: they're just children and they read what adults send them. That is why it is very important that our children become friends. They are both victims of the dictator's policy. This event should show that we are not enemies, we should reach out to each other. 

Now we are looking for funding for the camp: part of it has already been found and we have announced a fundraising campaign for the rest and we are very hopeful that it will be successful.

- It is particularly difficult for young people between the ages of 12 and 15 to adjust to life abroad. Parents are very busy with their own problems, settling down in a new place, and teenagers are really left on their own," says Olga Stepanova, one of the project coordinators, psychologist, teacher and head of the "Zachód Wschód Wsparcie" Foundation. - The aim of the camp is to integrate children who were forced to live in Poland into the local environment and help them adapt.

We decided to invite Polish teenagers to the camp to show that all our three cultures - Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian - are very similar and that we have a lot in common, not the other way round. Many of the children also need professional psychological support, so psychologists will be working with them at the camp. One of the Ukrainian girls we plan to invite is an orphan, her father and mother died and she lives with her grandmother in Poland.

We also want Ukrainian children from a Polish orphanage to come to the camp. This is another problem: Ukrainian children who have been left without parents in Poland are massively placed in orphanages. One Ukrainian boy's mother has died and we can't find his father, he's somewhere in Ukraine. The boy came to Poland to live in an orphanage, he has problems with his speech. And if such traumatised children are together with specialists and other children around the clock in a simple, relaxed environment, it will help them to recover.

From my point of view as an educator and psychologist, such integration activities contribute to the psychological support of children and give them an opportunity to realise themselves and learn to communicate with their peers, including Polish children.

You can take part in the camp fee by clicking here.