Mennonite Central Committee

Good Shepherd Children's Shelter, Makeyevka, MCC Ukraine

Press Release, October 2001
Makeyevka, Ukraine
by Mary Raber

Seven children, six girls and a boy, swathed in the required aprons, excitedly hover over a dining room table at Good Shepherd Shelter. A box of baking supplies — margarine, flour, vanilla, eggs — and a few exotic items such as peanut butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips are being unloaded. These things might be for sale in a special store in Kiev, but not here in Makeyevka. Obviously today's recipe is for an extra special treat because today is the last day of school. It's 4:00 p.m. and time for the weekly meeting of the Cooking Club under the guidance of SALT-er April Griffin.

"What do we do first?" asks April in Russian.
"Wash our hands!" the children loudly chorus and all scurry to a large basin
full of water. They take turns scooping up water and pouring it over one another's hands. It's no use washing at the sink because there hasn't been water at Good Shepherd for several days — a frequent occurrence in Makeyevka where the worn out system is constantly breaking down.
"What do we do next?" asks April.
"Pray!" they respond. Heads bow and one girl asks God to help the group share supplies and listen to instructions.

Quickly April names the four pairs of bakers who will each mix up a batch of peanut butter chocolate cookies. Since I'm a visitor here, my partner, Dasha kindly helps me find an apron and shows me our pile of utensils — a bowl, a drinking glass, one large and one small spoon.

The next step is to check to see if we have all the necessary ingredients for our cookies. As April reads off the ingredients, seven pairs of hands eagerly point to the groceries on the table, confirming that we do, indeed, have everything we need to bake.

"Margarine!"
"Here it is!"
"Sugar!"
"Right here!"
"Eggs!"
"Here!"
"Peanut butter!"
"Here it is!"

Having greased our baking sheets, we at last begin to mix cookie dough, reading out each step from the recipe book. Each pair of bakers takes a turn measuring the ingredients into their bowl and passes them on. In Ukraine we measure with drinking glasses instead of measuring cups, a standard glass being 200 grams. The older girls are faster and get a little impatient with the rest of us; there is some squabbling, some grabbing, but everyone knows the rules and keeps on working steadily. Dasha stirs energetically. We are careful to scrape every bit of dough off of our mixing spoon into the bowl.

"It would be a shame to waste it, wouldn't it?" she says.
We're not supposed to lick our fingers or the spoons, but some people can't help it.

The last step is adding the precious chocolate chips. Now we roll the dough into balls and line them up on the baking sheets. Some chocolate chips are left over, so a few children get creative and shape the dough into hedgehogs—shy, gentle animals that live in Ukrainian forests and have prickly spines on their backs — the extra chocolate chips make the prickles.

April carries the baking sheets off to the shelter's ovens and we start to clean up, but that's not nearly as much fun as mixing dough, and some of the children just take off their aprons and drift away—but not far—because soon the cookies will be ready. In a few minutes one of the older girls proudly bears a tray of hot cookies off to share with the office staff. The rest will be served to the other children at supper, but Dasha and I divide a smaller cookie that we're pretty sure no one will miss.
"We did a good job, didn't we?" she asks me, and I agree.

The Cooking Club is one of several special-interest groups that are offered from time to time to children at Good Shepherd Shelter. There have also been crafts, floor hockey, music, or a Travel Club that allowed children in the shelter to "visit" other countries and collect stamps in their club passports. The clubs and other special activities (summer camp, trips to the circus or sports events) give children who have known very little stability in their lives an opportunity to practice useful skills and work together.

Since its opening in 1997 Good Shepherd has worked to provide round-the-clock, loving, Christian care for children who have been living on the streets or whose parents or relatives, for whatever reason, cannot take care of them. The shelter can house up to 40 children at any one time and the official length of stay is three months. Children come to Good Shepherd in a variety of ways: relatives or neighbors bring some; teachers or police bring others; still others simply arrive on their own.

Once a child has been admitted, he or she goes for a medical examination at a local hospital, and children of school age are enrolled at School #50 in Makeyevka. Some children have never attended school before and it takes time to get used to the routine, but many have developed into good students. Educators at the shelter meet with teachers every day to consult on a child's academic and social progress, and slowly the barriers of a neglected education are overcome.

Katya, age 8, is a bright little girl who stayed at Good Shepherd for several months. A staff member writes, "At first there was no way she was going to go to school, and we didn't force her, but eventually she came around to wanting to go herself. Of course she was insecure and frightened (one of the educators even went with her and sat with her in class). But it was such a joy to see her bring her grade book home marked with a "5", even though it was only in physical education. (Note: "5" is the Ukrainian equivalent of an "A".) Gradually she has blossomed and we're quite sure that next year she'll be a good pupil."

Although three months is a short time to be together, it's long enough to learn to love each other, and children and staff alike face a difficult transition when children are either reassigned by local authorities to a permanent child-care facility (called an internat) or in some cases return home. To maintain contact, the shelter initiated a program called "Follow Me" through which staff members continue to visit children in the internats or at home. They sing together, do crafts, play games, listen to stories, encourage each other to continue to pray, and simply talk together about all kinds of subjects. Material aid — for example, clothing, canned meat and soap provided by MCC — is made available to families of "Good Shepherd kids" who are struggling to make ends meet and stay together.

Plans are being made now to begin to reach out directly to children who are still on the street, sleeping in basements, in sewer pipes, or cardboard boxes, surviving by stealing or begging. But the biggest dream is to establish a "rehabilitation center" where children could stay for a longer time and trained staff could help them rebuild some of what has been lost in their lives through poverty and neglect. Presently an old school building is being repaired for that purpose.

Valentina Vasilievna Chernova, director of the shelter writes: "At this time our society has met with a terribly difficult economic and moral situation. Children are perishing on the streets, forced to beg for money for their families and themselves, and some become criminals or drug addicts. When they come to the shelter they bring their problems with them. Children who are not yet 12 years old have a distorted view of life — they figure they don't have to go to school, but anywhere their fancy takes them. To think of 'family' as relationships between husbands and wives or parents and children is laughable. Life on the streets is what's normal. How are we going to get these kids back on the right path in life?"

One answer is the regular financial support that Good Shepherd receives through the Global Family program, which helps pay for operating expenses. One of the difficulties the shelter experiences is that support doesn't arrive regularly, which makes it almost impossible to do any financial planning. The staff of Good Shepherd has been praying about this situation, and regular quarterly remittances from Global Family are helping to take care of the problem. Valentina Vasilievna writes to all sponsors, "We wish you abundant blessings from the Lord: peace, joy and success in your work."