A drop in the sea

We help civil assistance to help

We do not pay attention to how we breathe while we have enough air. We do not notice how important the environment is for us until trouble happens. Children who become refugees, as a rule, do not even understand why this happened. Just the whole world to which they are used to suddenly fall apart. They part not only with their country, where their language, memory, relatives and friends, but also with the future that they had, and with their place in the community - and in return they do not acquire another.

The world in which they find themselves is someone else's, incomprehensible and often hostile. He does not let them into himself and does not offer them options - what can a person who has not received even secondary education can count on today? A position that is easiest to take in this situation is a confrontation. You can grab everything that you have your own - language, family - and closed in them, fenced off from the world that was fenced off from you.

For almost 20 years in Moscow there has been a place where refugees are trying to help children to build their relations with the city differently. Here they are taught the Russian language, try to arrange for school and help in it to adapt, here they are a matter of a “stranger world”.

For almost 20 years in Moscow there has been a place where refugees are trying to help children

The Center for Adaptation and Education of Refugees of Refugees under the Committee “Civil Assistance” appeared when a stream from the North Caucasus poured into Moscow from “hot spots”. They did not take children without registration to schools, they did not receive any education for years, they spoke Russian poorly, and in any picture they painted aircraft with bombs.

Now in the center there are many children from Africa, Syria, Afghanistan, there are children from near Asia, from Ukraine.

In total, about 60 children are engaged here. Of course, this is a drop in the sea. It would be arrogant to say that the center solves an entire social problem. And yet, these are 60 destinies. In total, more than a thousand are gaining such destinies over the years of the existence of the Center.

They did not take children without registration to schools, they did not receive any education for years, they spoke Russian poorly, and in any picture they painted aircraft with bombs.

Brothers BOZZ and GAT GOD from the Congo. They came up with beautiful names - Ben and Antonio - and ask to call them like that. We do not mind. They are 12 and 13 years old, in Moscow for 4 years. They fled from the Congo from the war, they live here in one of the outskirts, in a small apartment, where besides them - another 30 people. There are no other children there, but there is a TV - looking at it all day, they learned Russian well. The guys almost never studied anything. Therefore, they do not know how that all ordinary children know how to draw a house and a person, read, write, count. Now they are slowly, according to syllables, read the primer. They are quite vigorously folded and subtract if the numbers are not very large. The center hopes that it will be possible to send them to school next September, but for this you still need to try great.

Their little brother Basil, when he came to the center, growled more and more and very often cried. Recently, we had almost a miracle - Basil learned to play and made friends with the girl Marisa. Marisa is his same age, she is from Syria, in Russian she almost does not speak, so they communicate in some universal language of childhood. Kais from Afghanistan is also studying here, who wants to be a psychologist to help children with disabilities and therefore is engaged in the center almost every evening. ADIN from Kyrgyzstan, who wants to be a cosmetologist. Little Duaa from Syria and others.

In the center there are individual and group classes in the Russian language and school subjects. In addition, the center is engaged in helping in matters of a school. In addition to classes, there are holidays, trips, performances, film club and different normal childhood life.

All teachers of the center are volunteers. They are helped by curators - professional teachers. The center has no source of constant financing, and, unfortunately, it needs livelihood. There are expenses different, large and small.

Small are, for example, traveling for children. Refugees, as a rule, live on distant outskirts and the family budget does not allow them to even pay for travel. On an average of about a thousand rubles, an electric train, a bus, metro, per month, takes a month per month. In the center of the children they feed - we all know how difficult it is to focus on an empty stomach - money also goes to this.

There are more costs - this is rent, payment of electricity, salaries of those several employees without which the center cannot exist in any way. Even small help will help the center live extra day - and then for several dozen children Moscow will become a little less alien.