Introduction

Hello! Welcome to World Hope Canada's blog on the Lifestart Project!

I am Andrea, one of the Project Assistants working on the Lifestart Odessa Project with World Hope Canada. I would like to introduce you to this amazing project. The Life Start Project is a 3-year project, which is funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).  World Hope Canada will be working on this project in cooperation with World Hope Ukraine. The intent of this project is to improve the model of care for at-risk youth in Odessa, Ukraine. To do this we have 3 goals or components to this project. First, we will be developing an improved model of care for youth in the orphanages. Second, we are developing a foster care pilot for 6 young women. And third, we are developing a life skills curriculum to be taught in the orphanages. We will launch the pilot program for the life skills curriculum in 3 orphanages in the Odessa region, reaching more than 130 institutionalised youth.

I have been working on the project since May. My main task this summer has been to research the Canadian child welfare system. Over the summer we had another Project Assistant, Alexei Durglishvilli, researching the laws and legal framework for the child welfare system in Ukraine. Alexei has since left us for law school and we have been joined by another Project Assistant, Kim Howson. Kim has been working on researching child welfare in the European Union (EU). All this research will lead to two reports, which will form the foundation of the work we are hoping to do in Odessa, Ukraine. One report will be focused on international best practices. This report will offer recommendations of how to the Ukrainian system can grow and expand. Our second report is on the Ukrainian system. This report is intended to  inform Ukrainian child welfare practitioners of the system in which they operate. Many laws in Ukraine are developed at the federal level, but are not sufficiently implemented at the local level. This report is intended to be a quick resource at the local level.

In addition to this research and report writing, we have begun to develop the pilot programs. Over the summer we have gathered together a wonderful group of expert volunteers to assist in developing these programs. We have one team of 5 wonderful women working on the life skills curriculum, we have a dynamic duo of social workers to help us develop the foster care pilot, and we have savvy team of videographers to help us build a series of educational videos as well as videos for public engagement.

For all of us at World Hope Canada and World Hope Ukraine, this has been an incredible learning process. This project is a huge undertaking, which can be incredibly daunting at times, especially given time restrictions. However, the intended and hoped-for results are a central motivation: an improved system of care for at-risk youth in Odessa, Ukraine. We hope that our project will play a positive role in the lives of these youth and that through this project they will have improved life opportunities and be able to choose a better life for themselves. We also hope that the project will be so effective that the government will adopt the pilots, perpetuate them, and spread them throughout Odessa and Ukraine.