And so it begins!

At long last, after more than a year of preparation, the day has come to implement the pilots! Team Foster Care (Rick, Anita, and myself) arrived in Odessa on 19 June tired, but unscathed! This past week has been a busy one of training Dina, our World Hope Ukraine’s Foster Care Coordinator, in her many roles and responsibilities. This has also been a long process of editing the protocols, ensuring a final product that would work in Ukraine, culturally, politically, and financially.

Day one of the training. We had a full house as we introduced the foster care protocols to World Hope Ukraine Staff. From left to right we have Dina (Foster Care Coordinator), Marina (Translator), Rick (Canadian Team Trainer), Kostya (Life Skills Project Coordinator), Sergiy (WHU Director), Tatiyana (First Step Centre Coordinator), Lina (Head of Hope House), Anita (Canadian Team Trainer).  

Working around the table 

Rick and Anita: Expert Volunteer Trainers!

So far things have gone very well. The work has been tiring, but we’ve also had the opportunity to explore the city, hit the beach, enjoy the sunshine, and hangout with everyone at Hope House.  We have another week of foster care training ahead of us, including working with foster parents!

Here is everyone gathered for a birthday celebration at Hope House.

And so, all is well in Odessa! We’ve had one busy and productive week of training with Team Foster Care. Team Life Skills will all be here shortly and ready to start our week of life skills training! 

Wrapping Up and Winding Up

Our volunteer teams have been working very hard this past term. We are at last in the final stages of developing the pilot programs! Here is a brief updates on what Team LifeStart has been up to!

The Life Skills Team has been working very hard in developing the curriculum. This proved to be a mighty task. However, with teamwork and lots of effort, we pulled it off! The final copy was sent off for translation last week. There will be some tweaking to do once we receive the translated copy, but tweaking is manageable! We are now able to take a short breathe before gearing up for the training week!

The Foster Care Pilot Team also successfully completed developing a comprehensive set of foster care protocols and minimum standards of care, complete with an assortment of documents to enable smooth implementation of the program! We are now focusing on polishing the training weeks and preparing for the trip!

Our Videography Team has grown substantially these past few months. A number of volunteers have stepped in to help up translate and subtitle the video footage we took in October! Translation is ongoing and we will be focusing on developing some videos, including a seminar video for Odessa officials, over the next few months!

And so, though we have had a good many bumps along the way, everything is coming together nicely. Over the next month and a bit, we will be tweaking and finalising and preparing for our trip to Ukraine. Once in Odessa, we will get to work closely with World Hope Ukraine and local practitioners in implementing these projects!

Moving Forward

Despite some hiccups and bumps, work on Project LifeStart is carrying on nicely. We've readjusted some of our plans and the project timeline so that we can keep on carrying on. A big part of these last months has been to roll with the punches, improvise, and adjust. And so, we have a long road ahead, but we are moving along it!

Our Life Skills Team has finished the first rough draft of the curriculum! We have entered into a rigorous round of revisions, which will produce our second draft! 

Our Foster Care Team has created successfully produced a working copy of the protocols! We've had some Ukrainian volunteers review the protocols and provide feedback and ensure the protocols are suitable for Ukraine. We are currently working on all the many supplementary documents necessary for a functioning and accountable foster care pilot!

Having developed rough drafts here in Canada, we are starting to hand materials over to World Hope Ukraine for review, input, and revisions. This will be an ongoing process to ensure the pilots are culturally  appropriate and effective!

World Hope Ukraine will has also started the search for the Ukrainian staff needed for the pilots. They are currently looking to hire 2 life skills teachers and a foster care coordinator. 

Most excitingly, we are beginning to plan the training trips! This is that one fine moment when the Canadian and Ukrainian teams come together and get these pilots up and running! So far, the trips are planned for late June. More information to follow! 

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!

Progress in Canada

With Christmas nearing, we are working hard to wrap up our reports and dive into the next wave of activity. We are processing the assortment of information gathered in Ukraine, whilst working on the final editing of our International Best Practices Report! Work is largely desk oriented at present, but very busy. We are hoping these reports will serve a dual purpose: 1. to inform Canadians on what is going on with Child Care in Ukraine, and 2. to inform Ukrainian child care practitioners and government officials of the situation of their at-risk youth, discuss the strengths of the Ukrainian system, and offer suggestions of how to improve their system. We are working away on these reports hoping to have them ready for publishing by Christmas!

Our Life Skills Team is continuing to work on developing the modules for our curriculum! We have 3 modules well on their way, leaving 7 yet to be developed! So far we have covered maintaining the home, kitchen safety, and personal hygiene; meal planning and nutrition; and the program introduction with the development of group work and trust building! Each module is developed, the adapted to best suit the Ukrainian situation and culture, then written into a formal curriculum. Our final product will be a comprehensive package that we can hand over to the government to be broadly implemented in orphanages throughout Ukraine should the government choose to do so.

And so, our work on the Canadian side of things continues. The work is certainly accompanied with its frustrations and feelings of being overwhelmed. However, keeping in mind the ultimate goal of affecting child care in Ukraine and improving the life opportunities of at-risk youth is good motivation!

Some other points of interest:

1. World Hope Canada just completed their bi-annual meeting of the Board of Directors. After being updated on the progress of the LifeStart Odessa project, the Board re-affirmed our activity in Ukraine. 

2. Ukraine has been experiencing some anti-government protests this week, originating in Kiev, but spreading throughout the major urban centres of the country. I have been unable to find a reliable media report on the issue, but keep your eyes peeled for new developments! 

Life Here and Life There

I have enjoyed being apart of life in Hope House for the past few weeks. Every day is entirely different, with new drama and fun. There is a huge garden here, which provide food for everyone here all year long. With the frost coming, it was time to pull the carrots and store them in the cellar. Each girl took their turn in the garden. It was great to see the teamwork :)

Kristina and Tanya took the first shift

A bit later, Nadya and Vika took their turn

On a different note, I've been working with a translator here, Lena, one of the girls who used to live in Hope House, to translate the video footage of the interviews with the Hope House girls. As the details of the conversations came to light, I was surprised to realise that almost all of these girls came from large families. Like big, too big for the parents (usually single a single mom) to provide for. And so, another problem of why kids are on the street and in the orphanages comes to light.

Back in August, our Life Skills Team decided to create a section addressing high rates of teen pregnancy among at-risk youth. The section will include a little bit about maternal health and healthy pregnancy and a little bit about responsible pregnancy. Learning about these huge families, how the size of the family may lead to the neglect of a child, and that many of these families were started with a very young mother, I am reaffirmed in the importance of this section.

One of the Hope House girls, Luba, with her little brother. Luba was living in a small house with about 30 people. Her brother is still living there, but he came to visit his sister at Hope House

And, from what I hear, the Life Skills Team is working away in Canada, following the rigorous work plan and hammering out the first few modules of the curriculum. Our Foster Care Team is well under way as well. I look forward to returning to Canada this week and catching up on all the goings on! Being here these few short weeks, I am fully convinced at how helpful the LifeStart Odessa pilots can be! 

Team Videography

We saw off our fantastic videographers, Matt and Adam, off today at 5am for their 7am flight out of Odessa to Canada. It has been a great week and a bit, though very busy. Thanks, guys, for your hard work and I look forward to working with you in the upcoming months on putting all this footage together! (Heavy task, don't think about it just yet!) :)