{Note :Russian Christmas is on January 7th}

By John Kennedy

“Mammy, is this a dream? If it is I don’t want to wake up” – the words of my niece Aoife as she surveyed all the presents her and her sisters received on Christmas Day blazed uncomfortably through my thoughts a mere week or so later as I watched my colleague Noeleen from the International Orphanage Development Programme fight back the tears as she nursed little Jena, a four year-old boy, wheelchair bound and wrapped in a metal girdle to straighten his spine. “He was brought in weighing only eight kilos,” she said in shock.

The scene unfolding before my eyes belied an otherwise warm and jolly scene as children from the Oipovichi Orphanage in Belarus waited their turn to receive presents from an Irish Santa who with five others travelled the thousands of miles from Ireland to Belarus to bring Christmas toys and other necessities to orphans. A warm, bright room, full of smiling faces. Osipovichi was the first orphanage I had ever visited and the scene before me was at complete contrast.

It was my third year arriving as a volunteer with the International Orphanage Development Programme,a very worthy project that seeks to improve conditions for 11,000 orphans who live in 57 orphanages, child prisons and centres for children with disabilities across Belarus, the country worst affected by the Chernobyl disaster.

Every year team of volunteers led by journalist Tom McEnaney travels to the country to conduct work to improve living conditions for these orphans, many of whom are survivors of fallout zones but also special needs children and children who have been sexually abused.

Every year you think it will get easier but something always gets to you and this time it was Jena’s plight.

Ossopovichi is special for me because it was the first orphanage I had ever set foot in. It is also an example of the overall power of vision. On our first year we surveyed a dilapidated room full of baths installed in the 1930s that was supposed to help the children of the orphanage who suffer motor difficulties in their limbs to exercise. Each of the baths was accompanied by a water massage machine. They looked good but on closer inspection it emerged that the machines didn’t work and hadn’t worked for over a decade.

Three years ago Tom decided the whole thing could be removed and transformed into a swimming pool. I couldn’t quite see it at the time because the room seemed too small, but there before me three years later was a beautiful, modern swimming pool. The power of vision.

This year six of us headed out to Belarus and on the first day there I had to don the red Santa suit at Dyatlova, an orphanage consisting 73 kids, many of whom are brothers and sisters who get to live together. Dyatlova has been the beneficiary of IODP support for at least seven years and a lot has been achieved, including the construction of a sports hall, a farming project with machinery and an annual visit by a troop of Irish Santas who come with toys and sweets.

The director of the orphanage explained that without the IODP’s support the orphanage would probably have closed by now.

We learned during this trip that the Government of Belarus is changing its policy and plans to close down as many orphanages as possible, moving the orphans to social villages. While many of us believe that ultimately closing orphanages is a good thing, it is with no small anxiety that we hope the living standards and care of the children are utmost.

The orphanages are gradually closing and in Dyatlova’s case the numbers will be down next year from 73 to 65 or lower. So far two towns have been named as social towns where the children will live among real families.

During our trip we wound our way across Belarus to Kalinkova, an orphanage of 126 children, many of whom have psychological difficulties ranging from mild to serious. Again, Kalinkova is another orphanage in danger of being closed by the State and children with serious difficulties could end up being sent to adult facilities. The director of Kalinkova explained that the children at the orphanage there range from 1

form up to 11 form and are schooled in specialist abilities to ensure that on graduation they can work in construction, for example. Again I donned the red suit and endeavoured to give the kids a memorable Christmas party.

One of the final orphanages in Belarus I got to visit this year was Dubrovno, an orphanage in the west of the country that has been supported by the IODP since 2000 and the director’s objective of making the orphanage a real home for the 51 children was truly evident. The orphanage director explained that while much work has been achieved, he is now endeavouring to ensure that much of the orphanage can be reconstructed into family-based flats with kitchens and bathrooms to give the orphanage a social village status and keep the children from splitting up. The core ethos at Dubrovno, the director explained, is to help the children to live normal lives and experience normal relationships.

Dubrovno is also seeing the effects of government policy to reduce the number of orphanages in Belarus and the number of children living there has fallen from 150 10 years ago to 51 today. While the director admits this is overall a good thing, the key is ensuring that the children are properly looked after in the new social villages. “We try to do what’s best to help the family, to save it,” he explained. The new Belarus Government policy is to only put children in Dubrovno who are in high-risk situations.

“The most expensive option is the social village, the cheapest is the foster parent route. The key is to reconstruct the building so we can create a community where the children can stay together.”

During our tour of Dubrovno it was clear that despite putting in farm equipment, machinery, new windows and carpeting, there were still classrooms whose windows offered little protection from the icy conditions outside. Plus there seemed to be not enough of anything, in particular basic medical equipment including bandages and ointments.

After more than a decade working in Belarus, IODP is now looking elsewhere. It is planning for a day, hopefully soon, when its efforts in that country will not be necessary. In Autumn 2009 Tom travelled to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave surrounded by the EU, to investigate the quality of orphanages there. Although he took on some modest project during his trip, he came away assured Russia is applying resources to ensure children in its care are adequately looked after.

This year a group of volunteers headed off to Georgia where many other groups had told us the condition were truly awful. The were right. Volunteers saw condition reminiscent f when the charity first visited Belarus; children in ragged clothing with no toys and very limited access to books or educational materials living in conditions which would be regarded as sub-standard in most countries.

During the four-day trip the volunteers conducted a whistle-stop tour of six institutions bring Santa with them wherever they went. Projects were focused on a home and drop-in centre in Tiblisi, which is used by 35 homeless children, 15 of whom live there permanently. The children lived on top of each other with bunk beds squeezed into a space smaller than most domestic homes. During the trip we bought kitted out the kitchen with new equipment and bought new clothes for all the children. We also arranged to have the floors sanded and the bathroom renovated.

Each of the volunteers dispatched across Georgia told similar stories of centres in real and immediate need. In Korjani, a centre for orphans with significant mental and physical disabilities the normal Santa sack was supplemented with 1,000 large nappies, slippers, dressing gowns and underwear.  The Gldani-Nadzaladevi centre for 125 children with mental disabilities received similar assistance as did each of the other four centres visited.

The conclusion was that we had found another Belarus and, if resources allowed, we would be back.

Three years in and my experiences of Belarus continue to move me. The first impression and the hardest is the sincere gratitude of the children for whom there would be no Christmas if a troop of Irish Santa Clauses failed to show up.

Often you would be struck by how outgoing and chatty the children would be, but more than often it would be the one quiet little kid who says little and strikes you as shell-shocked at being in unfamiliar surroundings that grates the most. To anyone who is a parent or an uncle or an aunt, to consider the plight of many of these youngsters would be challenging.

But there is an upside. Every time you go back you see kids who have grown stronger, more confident. You see that they are surrounded by caring, professionals who are underequipped but are diligent in their duties. And it touches the heart that they wait earnestly for the return of the Irish Santas each and every year.

By Tom McEnaney

{Update: December 2010. The governmnet and the HSE has worked to reduce the number of institutioonalised separated children from 90 at the time this article was written to two today}

They were told to order what they liked and they did. Both floors of Madina’s Desi Curry in Dublin on were booked as more than half of the 90 Separated Children living in institutions across the capital enjoyed their first day out. 

There was an air of excitement as the teenagers, hailing mostly from war-torn African countries, tucked into halal chicken, tika masala and prawn biryani washed down with non-alcoholic champagne.

Main courses finished, one teen, a sixteen year old braving the minus five temperatures in a jumper, asked if he could be excused. Twenty minutes later his friends oo-ed and ahh-ed as he walked back into the Mary Street curry house wearing a new jacket. It was black, cut to the waist with a slightly military look, bought vouchers received from Santa a few days earlier.

Separated Children is the official term for children who have been rescued from child traffickers or who arrive unaccompanied in Ireland from war-torn countries seeking asylum.

In November Emily Logan, the Ombudsman for Children, issued what was a damning report detailing how the level of care given to these children was not only far lower than the care given to Irish-born children but lower than minimum levels required by Irish law.

As someone who has visited and taken on projects with orphanages in Belarus, India, Georgia and Ethiopia I can say that the level of care given in even the worst of the institutions in these countries is better than what we in Ireland consider acceptable for Separated Children.

Many of Ireland’s Separated Children live in hostels with no care workers and no supervision bar a security guard between 5.00 in the evening and 9.00 the next morning.  They are given a weekly allowance of €19 but as this has to cover all of their day-to-day expenses it does not usually last long.

But this was not a day for focusing on what they did not have. Only a few weeks earlier it looked as if Santa might not make it to the Separated Children. Then MCD, Taxback.com, and Swan Cinema’s stepped in.

As the curries were enjoyed many of the conversations centre on Sherlock Holmes, the film playing in the Sawn Cinema in Rathmines, which the children had watched that morning.

Later in the talk would switch to Disney on Ice, the show which MCD had lined up for the children that afternoon. As Minnie skated across the Citywest Ice to embrace her black-eared partner one child, a fifteen year old from Kenya, turn to say something. “Pardon,” I said, cupping my hand over my ear. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ve never been brought out before.”

It wasn’t so much an appreciated on Mickey and Minnie antics, although these were enjoyed by all the children. It was more gratitude for being thought of.

The day out was one part of a Christmas experience organised with the assistance of the Office of the Ombudsman for Children, which began when the children were asked for the first time since reaching Ireland to write letters to Santa Claus.

Taxback.com and MCD stepped up to make sure Santa knew the children’s address this year. The most popular item for the children whose annual clothing allowance is €350, was clothing vouchers, followed closely by MP3 players. For next Christmas all these children want is to be given the same treatment as the Irish children they share desk with in school every day.

A letter from Tom McEnaney, IODP founder.

Let me begin by apologising for not keeping in touch. It was wrong and I promise to be much more up to date with postings in future. As you know we do not employ staff, spending 100% of all donations on children, so the scare resource which is our time is often wrongly prioritiised in the direction of the immediate needs of the children we are hoping to help, when it is only right to also inform our friend base on ammado of what we are getting up to.

The good news, and it is very good news, is that we're getting up to quite a lot, much of it very exciting, if you're into that sort of thing, and I am.

In Belarus, among other things, we finished a new swiming pool in Ocipivichi Centre for children with significant disabilities. When we first arrived in Ocipivichi, which is home to 96 children, at Russian Christmas in January 2008 it was in relatively poor condition.

Since then we have put in new windows, effected physical repairs, added modern industrial machines to the laundary, and generally resourced the existing facilities, including new beds and new craft and physical education materials. 

My favourite project has been the swimming pool, which was completed in May of this year, having been conceived in January 09. Children with significant physical disabilities require specific physical training regimes, to maintain and develop their muscles and motor functions. I don't pretend to be expert in the field but there's the bones of it. When intervention comes late for a child muscles can be in stages of atrophy.

When we arrived in Ocipichi it had a suite of baths each with industrial water massage equipment attached. It looked very impressive but when we asked for the equipment to be turned on we were told they were 40-year-old German machines, which hadn't worked for 10 years.

So we gutted the place and installed a swimming pool, thanks to the combined efforts of Mick O'Brien's Dunshaughlin Crew, Geoff Spencer's expert guidance and Denis Vnuchko's committed coordination. In January we will add state of-the-art water massage equipment. 

Now we're adding an equestrian centre. Much of the groundwork has been completed. Donal McNally, a very well-regarded Dublin architect has designed the centre, which will be on a vacant site, adjacent to the orphanage itself. The regional authority has agreed to pay the cost of the "project" a sort of combined planning permission and quantity survey carried out by a state authority and usually costing one tenth of a building's cost.

Kingspan has kindly agreed to supply the cladding for the centre from its Polish operations. Kingspan, which is based in my home town of Kingscourt, is a very well known brand in Belarus.

We hope to begin contruction in Spring 2010 and to move the first horses in that Summer. Horse riding is a leading-edge practice for children with disabilities around the world. The child not only bonds with the horse, but in doing so exercises a wide range of muscles. When Donal travelled to Belarus to consult with local architects and equitherapist who has been hired to coordinate programmes, he was surprised to learn that the main ring should be rectangular, not round, to make children work more to direct their charges. 

Thanks to your kind support, the regional authorities have agreed to increase the capacity of the centre to 170. That's 80 children would are currently not receiving help who, in future will have access to leading-edge facilities.

Our next time in Ocipivichi will be January when we bring Santa Claus for the third year running.

If you want to support our work in Ocipivichi and the 510 other orphanages we have touched in Belarus and India please press "Donate". Although in time we will need a modest admin budget, at present 100% of donations go driectly to the orphans.

Tom

This year over 1,000 orphans in Belarus received a visit from Santa Claus – and much more – thanks to the efforts of an enterprising Irish charity. JOHN KENNEDY reports

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As our car makes it progress through a seemingly endless forest in the countryside of Belarus, snow hangs off the trees and you can’t help but reflect how the idyllic scene has been played out on Christmas cards that have decorated Irish fireplaces for decades.

For many of the 11,000 orphans spread across 60 orphanages in the country which was most affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster (60pc of the fallout landed on Belarus), homely Christmas scenes are a memory or most often figments of their imagination.

That is except for the over 1,000 children who this year – and for nearly 10 years previously – received presents, a Christmas party and much needed improvements to their orphanage when Santa Claus and his helpers rolled into town with help from the people of Ireland.

It was while covering a story for a Sunday paper 10 years ago on the efforts of Irish aid groups in the Chernobyl area that International Orphanage Development Programme (IODP) founder Tom McEnaney hit on the idea of bringing Santa to orphans in time for the Russian Christmas which falls on 7 January.

Since then, and without fail, groups of Irish volunteers have raised the money to buy the toys in answer to the children’s letters to Santa as well as identify and execute much needed improvements to their living conditions.

In this time IODP has invested about €300,000 in each of the 11 orphanages it has targeted to make improvements such as new roofs, windows, beds, medical equipment as well as sports equipments and books to nourish growing minds.

This was my second trip with the group and while I found it hard to tear myself away from the warm living room hearth at Christmas I had to agree with fellow fundraiser Noeleen Beehan, a senior civil servant, that it made sense once I was on my way. “It’s always hard but every year it gets better,” says Noleen.

The proof of this was my return to Osipovichi, an orphanage for 94 children with physical motor difficulties, after one year. My first visit there was also my first time to visit an orphanage and on that occasion I felt numb as I surveyed cold rooms, inadequate windows, antiquated equipment and poor lighting.

The first thoughts to often run through your head when you visit an orphanage is of loved ones back home and how young relatives could ever survive in such a place. At the same time I witnessed and understood genuine love and commitment from the orphanage’s staff who were doing the best they could with limited resources.

A year later I was instantly struck by how warm and bright the orphanage was as happy smiling children welcomed us in. Since our visit a year ago the orphanage has received 50 new beds, many orthorpedic, fluorescent lighting has been put in place throughout as well as electric equipment to stimulate and develop the children’s muscles.

Santa on the day was Donal McNally, an architect from Dublin, who was an absolute natural. His other mission was to sketch out plans for a new equestrian centre for the orphanage. Another key plan is to replace crumbling exercise baths installed in the 1930s with a modern swimming pool to help stimulate the orphans’ development.

I was pleased to run into two boys at Osipovichi whom I met last year; Yuri and Dima, who regaled me with tales about their visits to America and their love of the cinema and Harry Potter, whose books grace the library there thanks to IODP.

As we sat down to drink tea with the orphanage director, the resident doctor, a lady called Tatiana, told us how she was about to resign last year because she didn’t have the medical equipment to help the children until IODP bought them while on the trip last year. “All the staff were shocked by the improvements. We didn’t expect so much. We have found it to be emotional and inspirational,” she said in a trembling voice.

The next day, after a long trip across a snow-blasted landscape to visit Berezino, we met 21 of the orphanage’s 91 children.

One of the key strategies of the IODP has been to make the orphanages as self-sufficient as possible and often farm equipment from tractors to piggeries have been acquired and put in place. As well as windows, furniture and the other imporvements in the 11 orphanages which have been rennovated by IODP Brezino is one of six institutions which has received a 100-acre farm, complete with farm machinery and a 50-pig piggery.

The importance of farm equipment was underlined by Tom who on his return from an orphanage called Dubrovno in the north of Belarus revealed that it hadn’t received a subvention from the state for several months. “They were able to grow potatoes and feed themselves and also generate a small profit from what they grew themselves,” he pointed out.

The next day we visited Rudensk, a home for children aged 8-20 years who have mental disabilities or have been sexually abused and who mostly hail from the Chernobyl region. It was my turn to don the red suit for over 105 of the 164 children present this year.

We received a warm welcome from the Rudensk orphanage’s director Valentin who told us the children there have come to expect the traditional visit from Irish Santa Clauses with toys and sweets for the children. This is important across all the orphanages, he said, because the Belarus state can’t afford to send the children presents every year.

Rudensk is a particularly special orphanage as many of its young athletes have competed successfully for gold and silver medals at the Special Olympics in Ireland and China. In recent years IODP has sponsored the only Belarusian teams at the Special Olympics in China and in the Czech Republic.

“It’s hard to imagine what would have happened to this orphanage without IODP and Tom. Everything we had was being destroyed through wear and tear,” Valentin said, pointing out that in recent years the orphanage received over €300,000 in aid from IODP.

Aside from requests for vacuum cleaners and a lawnmower, Valentin said that what’s vitally important in time for the Spring is that the children receive new clothes and shoes. Rudensk works to equip the kids with vital work skills to handle everything from farming to working as mechanics. “We have been able to produce over 100 tonens of vegetables this year,” he exclaimed proudly. “The main thing is to ensure the children can work when they graduate.”

Valentin, who has been at his post for over 21 years now, pointed to the sad fact that some of the children who attended Rudensk are now sending their own children to their orphanage.

One of the first things you realise about these orphanages is a large number of the children are defined as ‘social orphans’ insofar as they have been put in the orphanages for their own good to escape homes blighted by alcohol, drug and sexual abuse. Valentin’s revealing statistic is that out of over 11,000 children in orphanages in Belarus, only 1,500 don’t have parents.

“There is a law today that biological parents have to pay for their children’s upkeep at the orphanages but this is difficult to arrange. Many are alcoholics and it’s difficult to track them down,” he regrets.

As various groups of children with broad smiles trooped up to receive their presents from Santa and demonstrated their gratitude through songs and dances, Valentin’s words echoed in my head. But there is something mystical about the chime of a child’s laugh that keeps you in the present. However, it’s the future Valentin is concerned about.

They party atmosphere at Rudensk was sustained by Aileen Durkan, a former nurse and a businesswoman who lives in Dublin, who brought face paints to entertain the youngsters. Their laughter competed with Aileen’s as she expressed genuine amusement as kids with newly painted faces ran to wash the paint off just to be painted on again. Something tells me Aileen would still be there today painting their little faces if she could.

In many of the orphanages we visited children were absent because they were visiting families who welcomed them overseas, mainly in Ireland and Italy. “Most of the children visit Italy because Ireland doesn’t invite as many of them as Italy,” he said.


The warm glow and happy atmosphere at Rudensk was replaced by the more formal and militaristic environment the following day at Krivichi, a children’s prison, home to 24 boys all attired in some form of camouflage garb. Krivichi opened in September and can accommodate 68 children. It is specifically for children with health ailments who have been convicted by a court. The most common offence was theft.

Responding to barked out orders the boys trooped to and from their lunch. All semblance of military order disappeared as they smiled gratefully as I handed them their presents of MP3 players, with the one exception being a Flash memory card. Ordered ranks dissipated into chaos as they ran to play with additional gifts of chess sets, pets and PlayStations.

Tom and Donal just narrowly defeated the home teams at chess, but despite Irish honour being upheld Tom is adamant in his quest to see chess rooms installed in all 60 of Belarus’s orphanages. Something tells me he will succeed at this having already successfully installed playgrounds and libraries in all of the orphanages in recent years.

The sombre nature of Krivichi was brought crashing home with a visit to the ‘House of Culture’, an austere cooler cell in which an inmate is restrained for three days at a time. Unlike Steve McQueen who in the Great Escape had a baseball to bounce off the wall, the one accoutrement the present inmate, a 12 year-old, had was a bed with a half-inch-thick mattress.

IODP’s inspired decision for Krivichi is to invest in an ice rink and equipment to encourage the boys to take up ice hockey, pretty much the national sport of Belarus since it is its president Alexander Lukashenko is an avid fan of ice hockey.

Our final visits were to two institutions in Beshankovichi in north eastern Belarus, close to the region’s cultural capital of Vitebsk. The first was to a centre for children with downs syndrome which had 10 full-time children residing as well as 20 children who visited on a consulting basis.

Donal’s natural gift for playing the role of Santa was revived as he danced and careened around the floor to the tune of DJ Aligator’s ‘I Like To Move It, Move It’ which came from a dancing cow that was one of the children’s presents.

Ahead of the IODP’s visit many of the presents for the kids were bought in advance by platoons from a paintball team from Minsk interestingly called ‘Team Irish’ led by the IODP’s man on the ground in Belarus, Denis Vnuchko. In keeping with best international practice for aid agencies IODP makes a point of buying all of the toys and equipment locally.

Our final visit was to Beshankovichi Transition Orphanage, which Tom introduced to us by saying: “This place will break your heart. It is where children just taken from their homes are kept until a decision is made what to do with them.”

He explained the transition orphanage is mainly home to kids between three and 12 who have been taken from their parents and there’s a period where parents can reclaim their children in advance of their being sent on to an orphanage. “Usually orphanages are better places than the home they came from.” One child’s family, he said, took up their floor boards to sell for alcohol.

Little boys in smart suits cautiously entered the room followed by little girls with solemn, composed faces. Once again the magic spell of Santa Claus – or Father Frost as he is known in Belarus – was evoked as uncertainty and solemnity was erased on faces that broke into the warmest, most grateful smiles I have ever witnessed. Tom was right; this place did break my heart.

He pointed out on this trip that the thing Belarusian people do is endure. It is a country that has been crisscrossed by many empires from the Tsar’s and the Napoleonic to the Nazi and the Soviet. It has also to contend with extremes from beautiful summers to petrifyingly cold winters and even colder economic realities.

But in the sacred dominion of childhood the one thing that must always endure is Santa Claus. And over 1,000 children can’t be wrong.

IODP is looking for a new name. We started off as Chernobyl Aid Ireland - Dublin, when we were as subsidiary of an organisation called Chernobyl Aid Ireland. But although that organisation set out to begin work with one orphanage, Grosovo is southern Belarus, and then move on to others, its founder decided he wanted to continue to concentrate on that one orphanage.