You're reading: Canadian-run camp for orphans celebrates 20th year in Carpathians

VOROKHTA, Ukraine -- Darya Trushkina grew up in Ukraine’s notoriously inept orphanage system after her life was forever changed, when as a 9 year old, she lost her parents and both siblings in a horrific accident. For years, she struggled against the daily abuse from both her fellow orphans, and her teachers.

Then, when she was 17 years old, a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend a Canadian-run summer camp helped her realize that her life doesn’t have to be defined by anguish. Trushkina has now moved far beyond her calamitous past and plays an impressive leading role at Apple. Hers is one of many success stories originating at the camp, set in the sleepy mountain town of Vorokhta, deep in the heart of the Carpathians.

“The most important part was that they convinced us that we’re not the trash of society.” says the 33- year-old Trushkina. “They made us realize that we can achieve anything we want.”

Her epiphany is the responsibility of Help Us Help the Children, a non-profit organization run by Canadian native, Ruslana Wrzesnewskyj.

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One camp resident pains “Glory to Ukraine” on the left arm and “Glory to its Heroes” not he right.”

The camp hosts orphaned children from across Ukraine for three weeks each summer. Wrzesnewskyj founded Help Us Help The Children after witnessing the appalling living conditions of Ukrainian orphans during a trip to adopt her own child.

Now, in its 20th year in operation, the camp was attended by over 450 children. The majority of the children were orphans, but in a reflection of wartime Ukraine, some were also kids who’d just lost their fathers to the war. One was just 6 years old.

This summer camp is just one of many programs that Help Us Help The Children runs throughout Ukraine. The most recent addition to their program is a bi-annual retreat and rehabilitation program for the widows and families of Ukrainian soldiers who have lost their lives in battle. But for the past 20 years, it’s this summer camp that has been the flagship of the group’s activities.

“Honestly, the first time I came to this camp, I didn’t even speak Ukrainian because I’m from the east. I was shocked to see that people like Ruslana from overseas were speaking better Ukrainian than we were.” says Darya. She adds that it was hard to fathom why anyone would work so hard to give them material goods as basic as underwear and jackets, because they never got anything. “In the orphanage, we were just constantly told, every single day, that we’re nobody and we can’t achieve anything. But you come to camp and you get emotional support. You get told that you’re worth it.”

The camp begins in early August of each year with children split into groups, aged 6-15 and 15-19. The kids are selected by the directors of each orphanage based on their leadership qualities and their good behavior. The younger kids settle in amongst two camps within the village of Vorokhta. Later on, the older kids will set off to their own purpose built base camp overlooking Vorokhta. Set on top of a nearby mountain, the kids will hike to camp along a gently sloping mountain path which snakes below the wires of a rusty old ski lift. Passing through the backyards of hillside Hutsul homes, as cows and chickens roam freely in the pristine grass, they’ll watch the town of Vorokhta slowly fade away from their view. Here, on this mountaintop, is where they’ll spend the majority of the next three weeks. Isolated from the village, they’ll only have each other and the counsellors to build deep connections with.

While at camp, they’ll be introduced to activities like archery, breakdancing, and baseball for the very first time. They’ll also be taught critical life skills through computer workshops, classes on HIV as well as Human trafficking awareness and leadership programs. Finally, the kids will have the opportunity to climb Ukraine’s highest mountain, Hoverla, a tough trek designed to challenge their strength, both physically and mentally. “The goal is to get them to believe in themselves and their ability to do whatever they want to do.” says camp counselor, Tanya Bednarzyck, who has been attending camp from Canada since 2009. “For a lot of these kids, camp becomes an incentive to study hard and behave well throughout the rest of their year at the orphanage because if they do, they’ll be asked back year after year.”


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Camp participants and volunteers dance at the Help Us Help The Children summer camp in Vorokhta, Ukraine.

The older kids, nearing the end of their run in the orphanage system, face a hard road ahead.

There is a gruesome set of statistics that belies the ear-to-ear smiles on these kids faces. Some 90 percent of Ukrainian orphans have been abused or neglected in some way while in the orphanage and the final walk out of the gates is in no way their saving grace. Within a year many of the older kids attending camp would be far removed from the beauty of summer in the Carpathians.

Data shows that by August of next year, 60 percent of these girls would have already been illegally trafficked as prostitutes. 70 percent of the boys would be out of the orphanage system, and locked in the cold concrete cells, of another, the Ukrainian prison system. Finally, 10 percent will be gone, having chosen to take their own lives.

While many counselors, like Bednarczyck, come from Canada year after year to participate in the camp, others are drawn from within Ukraine. Some are former camp attendees themselves, like HUHTC executive director Julie Vokalyuk, while others work as volunteers at orphanages all over Ukraine.

One in particular, who didn’t want to be named, worked at an orphanage in Donetsk when the war broke out. She says that her orphanage was initially flooded with kids from orphanages in cities like Mariinka, which were under heavy fighting. The orphanage took them all in but she says that shortly thereafter, representatives from the Donetsk People’s Republic demanded to take the kids to Russia. “The director of the orphanage told the (separatists) that there was no way we would allow them to take the kids to Russia, so they threatened her, to the point that she fainted. She purposefully fainted to diffuse the situation, and that spooked the (separatist) guys enough that they left the orphanage. Once they were gone, we quickly devised a way to evacuate the children.” She says they spent the next few days making phone calls to concoct an escape plan, using code words because they feared their phones were tapped. “Small roses meant the young children and large roses indicated older kids.” Once on the train, they all sat separately, so as not to arouse any suspicion, and communicated only via eye movements. “When we finally crossed into Ukrainian held territory, we all stood up and finally greeted each other.”

On the last weekend of camp, the organization surprised the kids by putting on an enormous traditional Ukrainian wedding, and a concert with performances that went well into the night. MC’ing the concert was Ruslana’s own daughter, Hannah, who brought one of the campers out onstage to read a poem he’d written. The young boy, bound to a wheelchair, brought many in the crowd, including Ruslana, to tears with his rendition of the peaceful Ukraine he dreamt of. The night wrapped up with an address from President Poroshenko’s advisor on child policy, who was visiting the camp in the hopes of using its format as a model for improving Ukraine’s orphanage system.

In the future, Help Us Help the Children will continue to evolve from its origins to meet the needs of Ukrainian families impacted by the war, says Wrzesnewskyj.

“We’ve already got the rehabilitation program going for war widows, and we’ve run our first two sessions of post-traumatic stress disorder counseling for soldiers returning from the front. We’ve evolved so much from what this first was. All I really wanted to do was start a summer camp for kids, and I didn’t even know what kind of camp it would be, but now we’ve evolved so much from what it first was and will continue to do so.”

Christian Borys is a Canadian journalist.