Lilia, what keeps you going when faced with such difficult cases?

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 385.

There are 9 social centres in Belarus. What makes them so necessary?

- Many families in Belarus face unemployment and struggle with a range of social problems including alcoholism and mental health issues. I'll give you an example.

We recently helped one family make a positive change. The mother had been born to alcoholic parents and had been very neglected as a child. She now has three children and was living in poor conditions. After her husband's death Olga became an alcoholic and struggled to care for her children. The state wanted to take the children away, but we could see she had a good attitude and really wanted to improve her situation. We helped her find work and clean her house and gave her the necessary tools to care for the children. Today, the children are still with their mother and the family have been given a chance.
However, not every story has a happy ending. We came across an 11-year-old boy who had been living in extreme poverty. He had lived through his father's death and his grandmothers' death and was not doing well. He was taken away from his mother by the state and placed in an orphanage. He then became depressed and tried to kill himself. The boy is now receiving help from SOS Children, but I know that his future remains uncertain.

My biggest joy is when I see a family who have been able to make a change for the better thanks to the help of SOS Children.

Many children, despite their difficult start, go to become happy independent adults. For example, Vlad came to the Village as a seven year old boy. His mother had sold their flat so she could fund her alcohol addiction. He now works as an SOS Education Coordinator in our projects.

Maxim and his sister Ekaterina came to the SOS Children's Village when they were 5 and 3 years old, after their alcoholic mother could no longer look after them. Today, Maxim works for the Village as an Assistant to the Village Master and Ekaterina is studying linguistics at Minsk University.