Chernobyl Children's Project International

video: watch ccpi volunteers in action in chernobyl affected regions

This 10-minute video was filmed in the fall by Ireland's RTE television, and shows Chernobyl Children's Project International volunteers in action in the Mogilev region of Belarus.

One of the children prominently featured in the piece -- Victor, the little boy with the cleft palate and tracheotomy tube -- died shortly after the filming. (Here is a photo I took of his grave last month).  His loss was a terrible reminder that children belong in families, not in institutions.

Along those lines, the film also introduces Ina Gudkovskie, who lived in an orphanage before joining a real family in one of CCPI's "homes of hope."  You can click here to learn more about the  Gudkovskie family, and watch the video to hear Ina (who speaks English) talk about how having a mother and father has changed her life.  Click the links to read the about the Zhila and Savin families -- happy homes made up of children who had suffered lives of neglect and abuse.  If you want to learn more about sponsoring a family home for children who have been living in orphanages, please email me.

Finally, the film updates the story of Vesnova asylum resident Sasha Levkin, who along with his friend Sasha appeared in the film Chernobyl Heart.  (Both boys are pictured here -- Sasha Levkin is seen holding a photo of Chernobyl's Hero, a Karakorum race horse
whose winnings are donated to CCPI.) Both boys have reached the age when they would typically be transfered to an adult asylum, where they would be warehoused until death.  The boys have feared and dreaded this prospect  for the 7 years we have known them.  In the film, you will see CCPI founder Adi Roche promising Sasha (as he weeps with happiness) that CCPI volunteers will build them a home of their own.   As I write this, that promise is coming true -- a CCPI volunteer team is in Mogilev right now building a disability accessible home for the two Sashas, and for 8 other disabled young adults who will be able to live with dignity, rather than being transfered to an adult institution.

When I talked to the two Sashas last month, however, "dignity" was not the word rolling off their lips -- it was more like: "Party!"  (Don't worry, we've hired staff to assist the young people and provide supervision!)  They were brimming over with excitement and anticipation.  After all of the difficulties Sasha has been through, it is almost surreal to realize that when I next see him, he will be able to serve me tea in his very own home.

chernobyl and getting on with it

This photo is from a series by Don Weber.  It's called Bastard Eden: Chernobyl at Twenty.  His book of photos is due out this spring.

I love these photos, and as I look at them I wonder -- why?  I think because they lack any kind of voyeurism. Instead of being invited to stare, we are invited to understand.  Each subject is their own hero.  They've experienced Chernobyl, and they're getting on with it anyway.

Bill Crandall's photo  of a young Belarusian girl in dance class is another of this uplifting, humanistic type.  Look at her face -- is she thinking about Chernobyl?

It's easy to find a lot of "Chernobyl genre" photos on the Internet.  The blogosphere loves the spooky "ghost town" sort epitomized by Elena Filatova and her motorcycle tour of Pripyat. Another type of photos accentuates  terrible human suffering. Paul Fusco's sensitive work is, in my opinion, the best of this type.  His photo essay brings a tear to my eye no matter how often I watch it.

I've been to these places and met the people featured in these photos, and I can attest with my hand on my heart that it is all true and not exaggerated -- and yet it is only a part of the truth. The most amazing and under reported truth of Chernobyl is that the people who live here really love life.  They enjoy life. They can be fun to be around. They want to move on with their lives. And they do.  If we wish to help them, the best thing we can do is give them that extra bit of support that will keep them moving forward and working towards a better time for themselves and their kids.  (And isn't this the same thing we want in the USA, when disaster punches us?)

We need a new mental image of people living with Chernobyl. I can't approach the artistry of Don and Bill, but I can snap off a family photo, and I have images of my own of Chernobyl people enjoying their lives. Sasha, shown here in his wheelchair, loves to party and flirt with girls.  I've heard he likes the odd beer and is looking forward to the flat we want to build him this spring so that he won't have to move to an adult asylum. Pavel, who lives in an orphanage in Kletsk, is an artist who would not accept my money for his painting.  And you should check out this story about Sasha Levkin -- a boy with cerebral palsy who loves to travel and will not be held back.

I'm in this photo with Misha. He started his life in an asylum for mentally ill kids -- probably misunderstood because of his cleft palate and what I like to call his "accent."  Most kids never make it out of a place like that.  A few years ago, Misha got an operation from American doctors in Minsk. Unfortunately, Misha didn't understand that he wasn't allowed to eat any solids for a week after the operation.  After a few days of being hungry, he ate an apple and split his lip back open. It's a tough break, but it hasn't slowed him down too much. In spite of everything, he is making a modest living as a cobbler, and supporting himself and the woman who adopted him as a teen.  He sees himself as a pretty handsome guy (and as  a result, so do I).  He is big fan of Jean Claude Van Damme movies.  He is not shy and he makes a few bucks re-selling gifts given to him by Chernobyl Children's Project International volunteers.  He never hesitates to ask for more or to pretend that he doesn't remember the previous (re-sold) gifts. He is such a smooth talker, that I question my own memory. 

I have scores of stories like this -- hope and persistence are the untold legacy of Chernobyl and I wish it were more widely recognized.

In April 2006, Chernobyl Children's Project International was invited by the United States Congress and the Helsinki Commission to testify about the ongoing effects of Chernobyl.  At both of these hearings, United Nations representatives cynically portrayed the "real effect" of Chernobyl as "psychological," as if people who live in these regions are simply weak minded and not brave enough. Shame on them for saying this! It's simply not true.  I was heartened, though, to find that the US Congress was not buying any of that talk.  I've been told by the Belarusian Embassy here in Washington DC that he USA is the #1 source of support to Chernobyl regions in Belarus.

Did this essay help you develop a better understanding of life in Chernobyl affected regions? Use the star rating system below to tell me what you think:

the little ears and what I learned

I have a memory of a child I met at  the Vesnova Asylum in a Chernobyl affected region of rural Belarus.  His photo is to the left.  He was in terrible discomfort. At the base of each earlobe, he had a bloody tear, as if the earlobes themselves were ripping from the sides of his head.  (The pink color you see in the photo is mecurichrome. If you're over 45, you will remember being painted with this wound disinfectant.)

I had never seen anything like it this, and couldn't imagine the cause. I pointed it out to Marie Cox, our medical program director.  Marie was a  Chernobyl Children's Project International volunteer for years before joining the staff.  She had seen cases like this before.  It was indeed a tear -- a tear caused by a (hurried and overworked) orphanage caregiver repeatedly and roughly pulling a too-tight shirt over the boy's head. 

I was so stunned by this it took me a while to really take it in. I thought about the playful and giggle-y times I've had with my kids getting them undressed for the bath.  Then I tried to imagine someone pulling their jersey up so hard that their earlobes tore . . . and then having it happen to them over and over again.

We deal with a lot of big, complex issues every day in this work . . . child abandonment, serious illness, disability, poverty.  Complex problems don't have quick-fix solutions.

The huge establishment aid organizations like UN and unicef are good about reminding smaller organizations (like us) that we need to focus on the Big Picture -- on helping whole communities over the long term.  And of course they are right!  But I hope we never get so big that we can't care about one child's little ears. 

Last week, we brought in 7 new caregivers to assist nurses at Vesnova, and to do better by these kids.  It's not a quick fix. We will still need to work on training, more training, and procedures and process.  We won't ignore the important "big picture" -- giving families alternatives to putting their children in orphanages. But we believe you also also want us to think small. 

100+ chernobyl volunteers set to return home today

Over 100 Irish, Australian and American volunteers will return home today after spending three weeks in Chernobyl affected regions of Belarus. 

We employ about 20 local staff in Belarus, have partnerships with a number of local organizations, and at any given time we usually have volunteers and program directors "in the field."  This trip, however, was a large scale effort many months in the planning. 

Most of the volunteers on this trip were were builders -- carpenters, plumbers, masons, and the like who gave up their vacation time to come and complete work on the Vesnova Asylum in Belarus.  (Here's more about how we help.)  Nurses and therapeutic staff joined the teams in Vesnova, where they trained local caretakers in proper techniques and followed up on care plans for the children, who have a wide range of physical and intellectual abilities.  About 50 very serious ill children live in the facility's "high dependency unit" and require extraordinary care.   

As this work was happening, a management team led by CCPI founder Adi Roche visited projects across the country and met with employees, local partners, and government officials.  Key areas for evaluation were our foster care program and community care program in Minsk.  Adi, joined by Jim Clarken -- our new general manager in Ireland -- and Marie Cox, our medical care program  director, also examined the effectiveness of a new "aid direct" program that provides year round deliveries of necessary supplies for our community centers.  This program improves upon our  annual aid convoy.  Now, we are able to deliver good and supplies as needed, and we are purchasing locally, which puts aid dollars back into the local community to raise the standard of living for all.  Now that certain supplies are readily available in Belarus -- which was not the case when we first started our work in the country -- we are seeing huge cost efficiencies in purchasing locally rather than trucking across Europe! 

The management team visited our completed community centers in Zhitkovichy and Petrikov, and surveyed potential new sites in Glutsk and Buda-Kachalova.  Our community centers and programs target the most under served and at risk communities.  The centers serve a wide variety of community needs . . . therapeutic services for disabled children, child care classes, vocational training and employment services, homework help, computer centers, and more.  Our objective is to give communities the means they need to become self sufficient and avoid the downward spiral of poverty and hopelessness that leads families to place their children in institutions.

We also spent time examining our hospice program in Gomel, to ensure that the needs of families with the most seriously ill children are being properly met by our team of local nurses and psychologists. Meeting these families face to face allows us to hear directly from them whether we are doing a good job and how we can improve our services in the community.

Even as we examined our on board projects, the seeds of new ones were sown in meetings with community leaders across the country who are eager to move forward from Chernobyl.  We'll report back with our progress.

meet sasha levkin

Sasha Levkin is one of the many children with whom we work.  Although he is mentally fit, he lives at the Vesnova Children's Mental Asylum in a rural area of Belarus. Your support allows us to improve the lives of many children affected by the Chernobyl disaster, as well us to provide hope for the future.  We do this largely by working on the community level.  But, by getting to know Sasha through his story, we have the chance to appreciate that behind every statistic, there is a unique human being who deserves to be acknowledged.  I know Sasha, and I am very moved by his dignity and positive outlook in the face of unusually difficult challenges.  The photo shows him with CCPI volunteer Suzanne Reese.

Eighteen year old Sasha Levkin, a resident of the Vesnova Children's Asylum in Belarus, stays indoors for months each winter because his wheelchair cannot be maneuvered in the snow.  To mentally escape the boredom of the asylum he spends time looking at a small photo album he always carries with him in a black bag hanging from the back of his wheelchair.  He shows the album to all newcomers. Inside is a picture of his sister Katja, who has not been to visit him since early summer as she has no means of  transportation.  He also has photos of his cousins, his godmother, and his aunt.  None of them visit more than once a year, but he says he thinks of them every day. 

Sasha's father committed suicide when the boy was 9 months old.  His mother , who was also an alcoholic, began to beat him when he was a toddler, until he was sent to live with his aunt in 20o1.

My mother didn't care about me, she didn't feed me -- she is an alcoholic, always drinking vodka and then hurting me.  I never want to see my mother again.  She didn't hit me when I was very little.  At that time I could crawl and could get up from the floor to the sofa by myself, but then she started to beat me and I could no longer do such things.

Sasha liked living with his aunt, but unfortunately his physical disabilities were too great for her to take care of him. 

So, he is happy with his life at Vesnova, where the other kids see him as a leader, one of the cool guys. 

I like it here at Vesnova, this is home to me, I like the director, but some of the smaller kids drive me crazy.  In the future I would like to be a translator.  It looks like a good job and then I could help CCPI.

I gave Sasha an English-Russian language program on CD, and he picks up new words and phrases with ease.  Since he is not able to use his hands, he gets some of the younger kids to change the disks for him. He and his friends like to sit in a circle repeating phrases, and they take their studies very seriously.  When I last visited him in April, he was using some of his new language skills to flirt with the volunteers. Sasha was even confident enough to patronize me a bit -- he told me my Russian language skills were improving "quite nicely."  I was chagrined that I could barely thank him in his own language!

Sasha is eighteen years old now, and he will soon be moved into an adult mental institution, where his prospects for survival are very poor.  "I don't want to leave Vesnova.  I have friends here and don't want to leave what has become my home."  We are extremely concerned about Sasha's future, but not quite sure what we can do to help him.  I'll continue to post updates.  The image on the right shows Sasha when I woke him up in the middle of the night to show him that his photograph was published in PEOPLE Magazine last year.  He was beyond pleased. (And I still think he should have been on the cover, instead of whats-her-name Tom Cruise's latest wife.  Go figure!)