Project "Happy Home" - Center for special needs kids.
We have partnered with our friends in Ukraine in hopes of offering support in their mission - a center for special needs children. If you feel moved to support their dream, please use Donate button above and leave a note "For Happy Home".
Here is a translated letter from the founder of the "Happy Home" center, Oksana Sydorchuk. Read original version here.
"We have learned to be correct when we are not talking about “children with disabilities,” but about “children with special needs.” But until now, society was trying not to see their inhumane existence in special institutions and did almost nothing to ensure these children a normal life in society. About 106 thousand children are brought up in boarding schools in Ukraine, of which almost 40 thousand are “special” children for whom there is neither much-needed infrastructure to provide them with real inclusive development, nor legal mechanisms to ensure such development.
Moreover, unlawful diagnoses, forced retention, excessive use of medicines, abuse and use of children for personal interests by employees of institutions, as well as many other flagrant violations of children's rights exist near us in the 21st century. Budget funds allocated to programs to improve the living standards of orphans with special needs are often "squandered" for various demonstration campaigns that do not bring any positive effect. Such children, as a rule, are rarely adopted, and they are forced to survive in a boarding school with miserable living conditions, where they do not have the necessary correctional and rehabilitation services.
We cannot stand aside and observe the transfer of our children along the route: special boarding school - an adult psycho-neurological boarding school, a nursing home. They have no right to choose, they cannot stand up for themselves, they do not know that behind a high fence of special institutions there may be a different life.
Our hearts are filled with pain for children that no one needs in this world ... Children, of whom we worry and talk so much, unfortunately, do not have the right to vote. Directors of boarding schools, educators, officials decide for them ... They don’t have parents or close people behind their backs who are ready to support, protect, and pray for them. Therefore, so many terrible things happen in their life.
One such test is a stay in a psychiatric hospital, where they are sent from time to time under the pretext of a “re-commission” to extend their disability status. After such hospitals (where they spend once a year from a month to three, and those who behave badly - longer), children return by others. They play a little, talk a little, it is difficult to recognize not only volunteers, but also their friends in a boarding school.
It turns out that our children serve society ... guinea pigs. New drugs are tested on orphans before being released into mass production; most often these are psychotropic drugs. When such a child goes to the hospital, the staff provokes him to bad behavior, to aggression, so that later there are "good reasons to" stab "with drugs." Our children from boarding schools are in a separate unit from family children, in completely different non-VIP conditions. Everything is different with them ...
Our great dream is to create a Christian center for orphans with special needs in order to save at least some! They cannot cope without our help !!!
This is a center for people like Seryozha Skrinnik with the label “not like everyone else,” the only place for which is the house of the disabled; where the young guy will have to live his life surrounded by 70-year-olds ...
Like Snezhana: she just waits for someone to die in the house of the disabled, and there will be room for her.
Katruha Vova - already there ... - calls our volunteers and prays with tears to be taken away ....
A similar future awaits 13-year-old Grishka with a diagnosis of mental retardation. He is not hopeless, as claimed by those who do not know him well, assuring that he will not be able to be friends, work, study, remember. But he can! He does it! He can remember the first time in which order to put products for making pancakes, without a word to understand that in the machine you need to fasten your seat belt, repeating the actions of volunteers. Can retell the biblical story, in simple words, but it can!
We believe that for Grisha you can still find a family and teach him the craft. We believe !!! And we are ready to deal with him, but for this you need to pick him up from the boarding school ...
A help center for children with special needs is a must! For Grisha and hundreds of children who deserve more than a bed in miserable conditions at home for the disabled or elderly.
The center will allow these children to receive professional support in spiritual, physical, emotional and intellectual development. And the results of the work of such centers in other countries suggest that a large percentage of such children will have the opportunity to become full members of society. Others, not amenable to rehabilitation and correction, will be able to stay there throughout their lives in conditions as close as possible to family conditions, where they can feel themselves in an atmosphere of security, trust and love.
The purpose of the Center:
To create conditions for the rehabilitation of orphans with special needs so that they become our own, necessary for friends, capable for school, prepared for life and loved and adopted for someone.
Tasks of the Center:
1. Create the best conditions for the rehabilitation of orphans with special needs at the level of spirit, soul and body.
2. To provide each child with individual professional assistance in the process of socialization.
3. Prepare children for inclusive education and gaining a profession.
4. Maximize the abilities and talents embedded in them, help in their implementation.
5. To ensure physical rehabilitation of children at a level that minimally depends on the help of others and is capable of independent work.
6. To teach children to accept and show love, respect, care, fidelity, sympathy, forgiveness, sacrifice and other traits and qualities inherent in happy people.
7. Find each child a family.
8. Provide every family that has adopted a child with special needs with maximum support and assistance.
Target group:
Orphans with special needs from 2 to 18 years. Children who cannot find a family under 18 years old will be transferred to adult groups, where they will be provided with life in society as much as possible. They will feel they are needed and accepted in society, they will have the skills to cope with life tasks and live a full life.
Capacity:
At the initial stage - permanent residence of 10 children and 2 employees.
In the future, up to 30 children and 6 employees with permanent residence in the Center.
Rehabilitation program:
1. The rehabilitation of orphans with special needs begins at the place where these children will live. This is a home where it is cozy, comfortable, safe and beautiful.
2. Individual and group classes with a correctional teacher, speech therapist and other specialists, pet therapy or animal therapy.
3. Diagnostics in medical institutions, individual lessons with a therapist, physiotherapy exercises.
4. Children study in a regular, comprehensive school, in inclusive classes. For children who cannot or cannot yet study with all, home-schooling will be organized (in the center). Organization of workshops for older children in order to ensure their employment and gain a profession.
5. Individual lessons with children developing their creative abilities: painting, crafts, music, poetry.
6. Physical activity constantly changing during the day: a sports complex, a playground, a garden, flower beds, workshops, a "living area".
7. Individual lessons with counselor, group Bible lessons.
8. Activities outside the Center: holidays, excursions, church visits, trips, camps, hosting.
Each child will be assigned 1 volunteer mentor.
We ask all those who care about the stories of thousands of orphans without a choice to feel pain in their hearts, to help implement this project, so that those who have had difficult trials to experience, feel our love and support and are able to look confidently tomorrow, growing and developing in the mercy and grace of the Lord.
Together we can give them a chance for a happy childhood! Children, like no other, believe in miracles. Let's create them together!"
We have partnered with our friends in Ukraine in hopes of offering support in their mission - a center for special needs children. If you feel moved to support their dream, please use Donate button above and leave a note "For Happy Home".
Here is a translated letter from the founder of the "Happy Home" center, Oksana Sydorchuk. Read original version here.
"We have learned to be correct when we are not talking about “children with disabilities,” but about “children with special needs.” But until now, society was trying not to see their inhumane existence in special institutions and did almost nothing to ensure these children a normal life in society. About 106 thousand children are brought up in boarding schools in Ukraine, of which almost 40 thousand are “special” children for whom there is neither much-needed infrastructure to provide them with real inclusive development, nor legal mechanisms to ensure such development.
Moreover, unlawful diagnoses, forced retention, excessive use of medicines, abuse and use of children for personal interests by employees of institutions, as well as many other flagrant violations of children's rights exist near us in the 21st century. Budget funds allocated to programs to improve the living standards of orphans with special needs are often "squandered" for various demonstration campaigns that do not bring any positive effect. Such children, as a rule, are rarely adopted, and they are forced to survive in a boarding school with miserable living conditions, where they do not have the necessary correctional and rehabilitation services.
We cannot stand aside and observe the transfer of our children along the route: special boarding school - an adult psycho-neurological boarding school, a nursing home. They have no right to choose, they cannot stand up for themselves, they do not know that behind a high fence of special institutions there may be a different life.
Our hearts are filled with pain for children that no one needs in this world ... Children, of whom we worry and talk so much, unfortunately, do not have the right to vote. Directors of boarding schools, educators, officials decide for them ... They don’t have parents or close people behind their backs who are ready to support, protect, and pray for them. Therefore, so many terrible things happen in their life.
One such test is a stay in a psychiatric hospital, where they are sent from time to time under the pretext of a “re-commission” to extend their disability status. After such hospitals (where they spend once a year from a month to three, and those who behave badly - longer), children return by others. They play a little, talk a little, it is difficult to recognize not only volunteers, but also their friends in a boarding school.
It turns out that our children serve society ... guinea pigs. New drugs are tested on orphans before being released into mass production; most often these are psychotropic drugs. When such a child goes to the hospital, the staff provokes him to bad behavior, to aggression, so that later there are "good reasons to" stab "with drugs." Our children from boarding schools are in a separate unit from family children, in completely different non-VIP conditions. Everything is different with them ...
Our great dream is to create a Christian center for orphans with special needs in order to save at least some! They cannot cope without our help !!!
This is a center for people like Seryozha Skrinnik with the label “not like everyone else,” the only place for which is the house of the disabled; where the young guy will have to live his life surrounded by 70-year-olds ...
Like Snezhana: she just waits for someone to die in the house of the disabled, and there will be room for her.
Katruha Vova - already there ... - calls our volunteers and prays with tears to be taken away ....
A similar future awaits 13-year-old Grishka with a diagnosis of mental retardation. He is not hopeless, as claimed by those who do not know him well, assuring that he will not be able to be friends, work, study, remember. But he can! He does it! He can remember the first time in which order to put products for making pancakes, without a word to understand that in the machine you need to fasten your seat belt, repeating the actions of volunteers. Can retell the biblical story, in simple words, but it can!
We believe that for Grisha you can still find a family and teach him the craft. We believe !!! And we are ready to deal with him, but for this you need to pick him up from the boarding school ...
A help center for children with special needs is a must! For Grisha and hundreds of children who deserve more than a bed in miserable conditions at home for the disabled or elderly.
The center will allow these children to receive professional support in spiritual, physical, emotional and intellectual development. And the results of the work of such centers in other countries suggest that a large percentage of such children will have the opportunity to become full members of society. Others, not amenable to rehabilitation and correction, will be able to stay there throughout their lives in conditions as close as possible to family conditions, where they can feel themselves in an atmosphere of security, trust and love.
The purpose of the Center:
To create conditions for the rehabilitation of orphans with special needs so that they become our own, necessary for friends, capable for school, prepared for life and loved and adopted for someone.
Tasks of the Center:
1. Create the best conditions for the rehabilitation of orphans with special needs at the level of spirit, soul and body.
2. To provide each child with individual professional assistance in the process of socialization.
3. Prepare children for inclusive education and gaining a profession.
4. Maximize the abilities and talents embedded in them, help in their implementation.
5. To ensure physical rehabilitation of children at a level that minimally depends on the help of others and is capable of independent work.
6. To teach children to accept and show love, respect, care, fidelity, sympathy, forgiveness, sacrifice and other traits and qualities inherent in happy people.
7. Find each child a family.
8. Provide every family that has adopted a child with special needs with maximum support and assistance.
Target group:
Orphans with special needs from 2 to 18 years. Children who cannot find a family under 18 years old will be transferred to adult groups, where they will be provided with life in society as much as possible. They will feel they are needed and accepted in society, they will have the skills to cope with life tasks and live a full life.
Capacity:
At the initial stage - permanent residence of 10 children and 2 employees.
In the future, up to 30 children and 6 employees with permanent residence in the Center.
Rehabilitation program:
1. The rehabilitation of orphans with special needs begins at the place where these children will live. This is a home where it is cozy, comfortable, safe and beautiful.
2. Individual and group classes with a correctional teacher, speech therapist and other specialists, pet therapy or animal therapy.
3. Diagnostics in medical institutions, individual lessons with a therapist, physiotherapy exercises.
4. Children study in a regular, comprehensive school, in inclusive classes. For children who cannot or cannot yet study with all, home-schooling will be organized (in the center). Organization of workshops for older children in order to ensure their employment and gain a profession.
5. Individual lessons with children developing their creative abilities: painting, crafts, music, poetry.
6. Physical activity constantly changing during the day: a sports complex, a playground, a garden, flower beds, workshops, a "living area".
7. Individual lessons with counselor, group Bible lessons.
8. Activities outside the Center: holidays, excursions, church visits, trips, camps, hosting.
Each child will be assigned 1 volunteer mentor.
We ask all those who care about the stories of thousands of orphans without a choice to feel pain in their hearts, to help implement this project, so that those who have had difficult trials to experience, feel our love and support and are able to look confidently tomorrow, growing and developing in the mercy and grace of the Lord.
Together we can give them a chance for a happy childhood! Children, like no other, believe in miracles. Let's create them together!"