SKIP Cardiff - Belarus

SKIP Cardiff is based at Cardiff University. Each summer we send groups of healthcare student volunteers to work in orphanages around Belarus. SKIP Cardiff is a long-running scheme and well established in Belarus itself; the children cared for have a range of disabilities, both mental and physical. We provide support for the carers by establishing care plans and promote acceptance and understanding of these children in their wider community.

History

In 1999 five medical students from The University of Wales College of Medicine, as it was then called, were invited to Novinki Children's Home outside Minsk; one of 35 orphanages in Belarus. The 200 young people aged 5-25 living there all have disabilities ranging from autism to schizophrenia and Down's syndrome to severe cerebral palsy.

Many of the children are victims of an impoverished society. Their families often live in Minsk but are too poor to afford childcare or be able to stay home and look after them.

In Novinki, the children were regarded as objects to feed, change and deal with rather than children that deserved care and stimulation. The fifty high dependency children were being looked after by two carers working 24 hour shifts.

SKIP Cardiff have been sending students to the Novinki Children’s Home since then and have managed to change how the children are treated, fed and made sure that the children have their nappies changed when required. They also make sure that the children get the stimulation and care that they deserve.

Thanks to many, many kind donations, SKIP Cardiff, along with other charities working in Novinki, have helped to achieve some amazing changes within the orphanage:

• Carers and SKIP Cardiff have worked together to improve working practices in the orhpanage and SKIP Cardiff have been able to supplement the wage of a teacher
• Unit 4 is now a ‘medical’ ward enabling greater government funding for care
• A stick is no longer used to punish the children
• Food is served in bigger, healthier and more nutritious portions
• The children have enough clothes and shoes which fit better
• There are more nurses to care for the high dependency children

A new caring ethos has been developed in Novinki enabling the children to develop as the carers to feel more valued and sympathetic. The students have been involved in a challenging and rewarding project. We feel that every student who has been to Novinki has had such an amazing experience.

In 2008 SKIP Cardiff launched a new project in Belarus, working in a similar orphanage in Cherven. Here volunteers offer care, play, attention and stimulation for the children who, like those in Novinki, also have a range of physical and mental disabilities.

Withdrawing from Belarus

Whilst we feel that our time in Belarus for the most part has been beneficial, for example the carers are friendlier and more accepting of training we can provide, there are more nurses to care for high dependency children and our most significant step had been the employment of a teacher within the Novinki orphanage.
However, sadly due to a variety of constraints, we feel that our advances and our ability to make a sustainable difference has stalled, therefore summer 2011 was our last trip. In particular Belarus’s unstable political situation and strict legislation has made making a difference in the orphanages increasingly problematic. Such legislations include how long carers can bathe the children as well as what spoons they can use to feed children. Although these may seem very minor problems, it simply highlights the challenge of even trying to make the smallest difference, and therefore the sustainability of our interventions.

And so with our exit strategy from Belarus in full swing, this year we aim to design a new project which allows us to make a greater impact with longer lasting benefits for children. A key concept of the new project is that it will be sustainable – we want the effects of the project to outlive the project itself. However, deciding on both a new intervention and geographical location have proven to be quite a task. Our plan of action has been to make a list of requirements for the possible country, shortlist all the countries that fit this formula, and then assess what interventions would be suitable for these countries. Once this is done, it will be a matter of deciding where we can do the most good whilst ensuring the safety of our volunteers and hopefully keeping the costs down.

Our criteria for the new country include:

Whilst the country must fit this outline, it must also be somewhere that SKIP can make a difference. Using the Unicef website and any other resource we can find, we have determined what needs each country has and if this is something that SKIP Cardiff can address. Our ideas so far have included safe sex education in countries were HIV is endemic and hygiene promotion.

Armed with a list of every country in the world, our criteria, and as many laptops as we could get hold of, we set about crossing out the countries that were inappropriate and highlighting any that we felt could host our new project. This exercise taught us that firstly there are a lot of countries out there, and secondly that dozens of countries fit the bill and are in dire need of help – our “short” list consists of 42 countries. It is now our task to assign several countries to each committee member, who will research the country in view of our criteria and possible interventions, and present their findings. Countries that so far look promising include Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cape Verde and Swaziland, but with every country on our list having varying needs and its own appeals, who knows where we will find ourselves.

Contact us

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For more information about SKIP Cardiff or our project in Belarus please contact us at skipcardiff@googlemail.com.