On the 18th and 19th of November was held a first Mentoring Conference. The Mentoring Project One Hope which initiated the conference and conducted it with the support of the “Ukraine Without Orphans” Alliance has already been implementing the Mentoring Program for the past two years – the efficient and modern way to help orphans and those deprived of parental care, who are being brought up in the child centers of Ukraine. The Project practices the searching, training and supporting of Mentors. Mentor is an adult who is ready to become a significant person in the life of an orphan. In practice it happens the following way: on a regular basis the adult visits one child in the establishment where he resides in order to build communication, help in studies and to spend time together around common interests, in one word – Friendship. One of the main speakers of the Conference was Ludmila Petranovskaya – a teacher, well-known psychologist and the author of the book “An Adopted Child Has Entered the Class”. The initiators of the Conference purposefully invited the leading specialist who deals with the questions and problems of education of orphans on a daily basis. All the topics which the speaker Petranovskaya thrust into the spotlight had at times rather unexpected, but very useful and extremely important information. People with different social statuses, tastes and characters, of various ages and professions were united by one goal in order to help children, who against their will were deprived of normal life conditions, succeed and get back the desire to grow and develop, to have the vision for the future and not to fall back into the past life. Those people are the Mentors of One Hope Project. At the Conference they were our heroes. The initiators of the Conference have set the goal to thank all of the Mentors, to show them respect and to emphasize the significance of their mentorship. Warm words and nice presents, useful and informative interactive sessions of the Conference created the unique atmosphere which was accepted by the participants with appreciation. The Conference united two categories of the participants: Mentors of the Project and various organizations, representatives of which arrived from all over the Ukraine in order to know more about the methodology of work, to talk about the partnership with the Project and the establishment of similar projects in the cities where they came from. It was especially pleasant for us to meet at the Conference delegates from Belarus. All those organizations have been involved in the orphan’s ministry for quite a while and they are well informed as well as experienced. Specialists of the Project shared their mentoring experience, methodology and other differences. There was also organized a round table on “Discussion of the partnership of the non-government organizations with the government services” in which took part the head of the Kyiv Service of Children Nikolai Kuleba and other social services workers in Kyiv.
“The Conference had two main objectives: to gather all active Mentors in order to thank them and to inspire them for the further work and also to make presentation of the Project for other organizations that work for the sake of orphans. As a head of the Project I think that our objectives were achieved. Our Mentors were professionally trained, had a chat and just relaxed. Representatives from other regions of Ukraine received answers to their questions – we have the partnership agreement. The main thing is to reach every orphan child in Ukraine who lives in the orphanage through Mentoring. This objective can only be gained by joint efforts of different organizations. If anyone is interested in such project – please, address the Mentoring Project of One Hope – we will be glad to cooperate.” – the head of the project Pavel Gladchenko shared his thoughts.
Back
