It has been two months since our teams from Canada worked with teams in Ukraine to get Project LifeStart Odessa up and running. The training weeks have brought a different pace to the project and a new set of activities.
After months of research, compiling, and writing, we have completed our two reports. One report, At-Risk Youth in Odessa: Opportunities and Challenges, provides a situation analysis of youth in Odessa, whereas another report, Best Practices: At-Risk Youth Report, provides an overview of international best practices in the provision of child welfare services. These reports have been sent off for translation and will soon be available in English on the World Hope Canada website.
During the training, we received wonderful feedback from our teachers. Everyone has high hopes about the coming term! Since leaving, Kostya, the Life Skills Coordinator, and our two life skills teachers, Valya and Alyona, have been working with the orphanages to get everything ready to start teaching with the start of the school term!
The foster care training laid a solid foundation to this aspect of the project. We are currently working on developing ongoing training for the foster parents. This ongoing training will look like a monthly study group and provide more information on topics such as discipline, attachment, and self-esteem. This tool is intended to build on the current foundation and offer further support to our foster parents. We hope to have it ready sometime this autumn.
We have had another interesting development with the onset of an unanticipated trip this autumn to show the project in action to our project worker at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). This trip will happen in October, which is looking like a very busy month for Sergiy. This will be a wonderful opportunity to showcase the project and receive some first hand feedback from CIDA.
And so, the work continues!
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