The New Year

In many ways the LifeStart Odessa project is carrying steadily on in the new year. In other ways, we are hitting some bumps in the road. 

We are happy to welcome a couple new members to the Project LifeStart team: Zoia and Plato. Zoia as an intern and Plato as a volunteer. It is great to have fresh faces and minds to help out!

Our life skills team is trucking on! We are hoping that we will have a rough draft of all 10 modules by the months end! From there, we will work on identifying gaps, adapting the material to suite Ukraine, and really hacking it out into a second draft!

Our team working on the foster care protocols are also working away. This element of the project has proved to be larger than we all anticipated originally. However, we are all working hard to establish a comprehensive set of protocols.

Some hiccups have occurred in subtitling our video footage. The material itself is powerful and heartbreaking. The footage includes interviews with the girls from Hope House and stories from street kids, as well as interviews with local practitioners and most of the World Hope Ukraine staff. Having been exposed to the material for some time, I had nearly forgotten how these stories and interviews can affect people. Working with three subtitlers since late November has reminded me how people can be affected! However, we have happily welcomed a new volunteer to Project LifeStart, Plato, who is helping us with the subtitling. Our videographers are chomping at the bit to start producing something from the footage, so, while we continue with the subtitling here in the office, they will produce a short film for Stephanie and Kim to use in public engagement this spring. If you would like someone to come speak to a community group, church, school, etc about the project, please contact Stephanie (stephanie@worldhope.ca)!

Another hiccup presented itself shortly after I returned from Ukraine. Only now are we realising the extent of this hiccup. Now, life in Ukraine pivots on connections. While I was in Ukraine, Odessa held  municipal elections. Sergei wasn't overly pleased with the outcome of the elections, but no real trouble came about until lately. Sergei had long developed a network of connections, which helps smooth the running of World Hope Ukraine. With the new government, many of Sergei's connections were lost, being replace with new individual in a new government. Furthermore, the previous government was aware of World Hope Ukraine and approved of the work in child welfare. The new government, however, seems to know little about World Hope Ukraine and its work, past or present. Sergei has been working hard to develop new connections in this government, but is coming against considerable resistance and discouragement. We are certainly carrying on with developing and implementing our pilot project. However, ideally, we would like the government to love these pilots, take them over, and proliferate them throughout Odessa and beyond! We are working hard to foster new relationships, to keep the spread of the pilots a possibility, but these things, so it seems, takes time and a touch of luck! 

Feel free to drop Sergei a line to encourage him in this discouraging bit of the project (gomiletika@gmail.com)! People and support are essential elements to this project!