Friends, I never cease to admire you!
Within two days, you transferred more than UAH 22,000 worth of funds to the “Don’t Be a Baobab” campaign together with the Transcarpathian Military Support Movement. And instead of the planned trips to two psycho-neurological boarding schools and 300 gifts, we visited as many as 7 institutions within three days and gave 1038 holiday gifts. Even after the announced two days of fundraising, your help has kept flowing. Your response to the request for help has exceeded expectations.
The fact that you joined such an important cause gave a real holiday for people with disabilities who are hidden from society in boarding schools. And not just hidden – deliberately forgotten by society. Every day they are behind the double fence of life, separated from everything familiar to you and me, immersed in the only thing that is available to them – in their deep inner world. But your concern made them feel important that they weren’t forgotten. Therefore, I present today’s photos to you. So that you share these feelings with us, see how warm it was these days. The warmth you created!
It’s probably hard for you to imagine, but even ordinary bananas caused a storm of emotions in people. Some of the wards saw and tried them for the first time.
The pupils whom we congratulated, adults and children who spend almost their entire lives in neuropsychiatric boarding schools, are deeply lonely, invisible to society. The outside world is often limited to them with their own room. They are closed in themselves, poor in emotions, and are in a state of severe mental deprivation. They do not have smiles that you get used to, however, they are real, open and sincere. Even when it seems to you that one of them is looking at you with a grin, this does not mean at all that he does not like you. It’s the same when you think they want to hit you. But in reality, they want to give you their love – in the way they know how and can express it.
The realization pierces to the depths that people deprived of love since childhood are ready to sincerely share it with you. In fact, the gift they receive from you is not only sweets with fruits, but much more valuable, something that everyone can give, but not everyone is ready for – attention and indifference. There is an acute shortage in such institutions.
The appearance of our snow maiden girls made men younger than 85 happy – many of them wanted to get a photo with a kiss as a keepsake. It was also a small, but big miracle for the wards. But the most difficult role, as it turned out, fell to our Nikolai. Wards buried themselves in his beard, wept, touched, kissed his hands and knelt before him. It was especially hard to hear the children’s requests to Nikolai to take them home. And one woman stood motionless for five minutes, hugging him, and no one was able to do something.
After this experience, having passed so many emotions through himself, our Nikolai collapsed, became withdrawn for the whole day and could not talk to anyone.
During the visits, the wards of the boarding schools gave Nikolai embroideries and drawings, sang songs, and some directors of the boarding schools refused to accept gifts until we watched the festive performances prepared for us by the pupils.
Separately, I would like to thank directors of boarding schools, who strive to make them open to society and are not afraid to voice problems. For the fact that every day they give a piece of their heart to their wards.
Perhaps, over time, you will forget that you donated a certain sum of money, but the wards will remember these moments as one of the happiest. Previously, the phrase “Helped one person – helped the whole world” seemed banal to me, but now I’m starting to believe in it again. Thank you. Thanks.