Translated material
Find out and feel
Both we and everyone around us are used to thinking that “such things” are an publication about Russia in which everything is bad. About social problems that have not been solved for years. About people dying without painkillers and support. About abandoned children and old people
Good story
The outgoing (thank God) 2020 was the same as it was impossible to represent in December of the past, completely ordinary year. Then I planned business trips, was going to travel around Russia and write about different amazing ones. But I was not going to sit at home with a mask with my nose and peeling from gloves with my hands. And every day to read the news that someone died was not going to. The news about how they try to turn on the neighboring of my friends familiar to my plans. But all this happened, and Facebook tape still swells with pain, blood and tears - every day only more and more.
There was a lot of work this year - I seemed to be counting on this, but I didn’t think that in April I would stop grabbing 900 minutes a month on the phone, because I would lose the opportunity to meet with the heroes of my materials and they would turn into voices in the tube, into trembling images from video calls. I did not think that the first personal meeting in August after a break - when it seemed that everything was going on - in emotions would not give in to the first date - so, it means that one can be hungry for people, they are so more than their votes.
Then, in August, I was going to fly on a business trip to Ulyanovsk to get acquainted with the owner of one such vote-Maxim Chirkov, an amateur athlete, who several years ago began to gather unnecessary sports uniforms and transfer it to poor rural schools, orphanages and veteran organizations of his region. It all began as a small initiative, and now he annually exceeds several tons of clothes, shoes, techniques and other things through his own apartment, which eventually find themselves in the hands of those who could not dream about them.
A few days before departure, Maxim wrote that everything is canceled, because he was diagnosed with Covid. He transferred the disease without complications, but he still had to postpone his personal meeting - when she will take place, no one knows, of course. A small note about Maxim has already come out on “such matters”, and you can read it right now . Now such texts are especially important, because it is a good story. Of course, it is about the fact that the situation in the regions as a whole is quite sad, but also that only one person is able to change this situation.
When you are inspired
Looking at several dozen texts that came out this year, I suddenly realized that there were not so few good stories among them. Suddenly-because every time you find out that something has become better than it was, you catch yourself on this feeling: does it happen? You cannot believe that you yourself write these words, that you hear this happy voice, you see these faces.
Here is Lena of the Belarusian Orsha. By the age of forty, she believed that her life was finished, and dreamed of settlement in the nursing home: there were several prisoners and twenty years of use of opiates behind her. At some point, she seemed to stop using, moved to Russia, but even here she was awaited by difficulties that are not enough for anyone: an unexpected pregnancy, a fire in the house, a breakdown, depending, the news that she had HIV, the removal of a newborn baby and a conflict with the law.
Elena plays with her son Daniel photo: Tatyana Tkacheva for TDRead it is a real social thriller , but it ended not with death or something tragic, it, oddly enough, has a happy ending. Lena was helped by several charitable organizations at once: his son - completely healthy - returned to mom and dad, together they left for Belarus. These events happened four years ago. Now Lena and her husband Igor and son Danik live in Orsha. Danik goes to kindergarten, and Lena works as a nurse - helps doctors save patients from Covid. She has no drug problems all this time. True, now Lena herself lies in the hospital - he heals her legs that have not completely restored after long -standing fractures, but he is awake, he says that she promised her son to play football with him and intends to restrain her promise.
But Denis . He has a Duchenne myodistrophy - an incurable genetic disease with which up to twenty in Russia usually does not live in Russia. But Denis is twenty -two, and he does not live - he lives. He says that when you are inspired and morally feeling well, then physically everything is in order. And his work (in fact, three works), social activism and his main brainchild - the sensory guitar “Galaxy” are inspired. Since childhood, he loves music very much, but he, as well as thousands of other people with myodistrophy, had to play on an ordinary guitar, he had to invent.
Denis Photo: Lisa Zhakova for TDDenis’s “Galaxy” is not just an idea - there is a working prototype. I follow his adventures on Facebook and, when I read that Denis is negotiating the production of Galaxy in the USA, presents his project at Russian and foreign venues, attracts funding and technology - you know, I think this is a good story. Which might not have to be, not to meet Denis’s path of the MoMio charity foundation.
Do not neglect
There are a lot of good stories in “such matters” and in Russia. Just look, just think how many people work in NPOs, how many people make donations and volunteer simply because they consider it right, they want to spread the good to the best of their strength and capabilities. Like Zhenya from the charity organization "Orange", which I wrote about at the end of the year .
I would never have thought that simple communication, simple personal relationships can be so important for people that are contained in neuropsychiatric boarding schools. And he saw how Zhenya chatting and diving with jokes with her ward Vitya - I realized that without it nowhere. She is pure happiness for Viti, his man-and he, for her, actually, too. Because when we do good, we help not only others, we help ourselves - banality, but what an important and, so to speak, socially useful.
Apartment of the charity organization "Orange" Photo: Lisa Zhakova for TDProbably, precisely because of this banality, many wards of charitable organizations remain to work in them, they themselves become philanthropists, volunteers, equal consultants. As a glory, literally saved by the Deaconia Foundation from many years of dependence, self -destruction and decay, in which he was mired with his head. But months of rehabilitation and sincere support of people who know what needs to be done in such a situation, changed it, turned it from a criminal element into a sensitive consultant, which now helps others. And in the view of his former friends, Glory simply “has gone crazy, walks around Peter, tells about God and hangs out with the homeless.”
Vyacheslav Minin in Polyustrovsky Park Photo: Valery Zaitsev for TDWhen I tell these stories to my friends, many do not believe in them, because in our view it does not happen, but I know: it happens. Here they are-those to whom they helped, but those who helped, they are all in the world, and we write about them in “such matters”. We write for a reason, we write, to help too, to raise funds, to tell people that the support of charitable organizations should not be neglected, because it is they who will come to the rescue that they will come to the rescue.
This cannot be
We ourselves are a non -profit organization - we live on donations, which are often not enough to continue work. This year, in the first wave of Pandemia, “such things” celebrated the first anniversary - we were five years old. And, despite the joy of this occasion, it was difficult to get rid of the thought that all this might not be, that our situation - like any independent media in Russia - is very shaky. And from another thought - that if not us, then about glory and Zhenya, about Denis and Lena, most likely no one will write, which means that no one will know the good stories that are so needed.
Yes, not all of our heroes are saved from trouble, not everyone survives, and someone practically cannot be helped, and for those who write about them, who editing the texts, this, frankly, is not easy. Because to write about ordinary people, not missing their stories through their heart, does not come out. But I, like dozens of other authors, really want to continue to work in “such matters”, continue to talk about those who remain outside the media space, but within their apartments and prison cells, shelters and dens. I really hope that the pandemic will end soon, we will all close the good vaccines and go on business trips again, and meet our heroes again.
I’m still going to fly to Ulyanovsk to Maxim, who has just a peak of sending things in the spring - to see how he washed and sorted out a sports uniform, and then on his little “golf” he is lucky to give children, play football with them and teach marathon running. It’s good if the photographer goes with me, because then we will bring a truly beautiful and good story-I promise. But for this we really need your help.
Please give us a gift for the New Year - issue a regular donation in support of “such cases”. The more you will be, the more we can find out and feel, the more people will not be left without support and attention.
The material uses links to publications of social networks Instagram and Facebook, as well as their names are mentioned. These web resources belong to Meta Platforms Inc. - It is recognized in Russia as an extremist organization and is prohibited.
The material uses links to publications of social networks Instagram and Facebook, as well as their names are mentioned. These web resources belong to Meta Platforms Inc. - It is recognized in Russia as an extremist organization and is prohibited.