Mentors, orphanages and orphanages

Briefly

Sasha has been accompanied by orphans to adulthood for nine years. He supports, is friends with them and teaches what the children usually learn from their parents - to cook, ride the subway, do home, later - look for work and pay taxes. She is volunteer in the organization "Elder brothers of the senior sisters." Usually there is a rule at NGOs: one volunteer is one child, but Sasha has a record - she managed to become a “older sister” of three. Sasha said what it means to be a mentor and what problems are children from orphanages faced.

My morning began with VKontakte's message: “Sasha, I'm sorry, I can’t come today, my card is not clear who has, and I will block it.” This is written by my senior ward Valera, a former pupil of the orphanage, he had to come to me to wash things.

In 2012, when we met, he was 13, but he looked 10 years old. Growth deficiency, developmental delay, pedagogical neglect, violation of attachment, catastrophically narrow horizons, monstrous self -doubt and compression. This is where we started. Today, Valera still complexes because of his growth, conducts an unequal battle with self-doubt, now and then sits without work and without money, he was already disconnected by electricity for non-payment, and he will receive a certificate of secondary education no earlier than twenty-five years. And yet, I can proudly say that Valera is a champion: facing difficulties, he no longer givees his hands, but most importantly-he learned to ask for help.

In the year, when we met him, I was a 22-year-old graduate of the Literary Institute, who first remained one on one with an adult independent life. I came out of Bolotnaya Square in complete confusion and the feeling that my country was rolling into tartarara, and after it my life. That adult life does not consist of freedom, joy and pleasures, but of boring work, anxious sleep, random food on the run and many hours in crowded transport on the way to work and from it. As well as reading news and sensations of complete helplessness and futility in this world, in this country and in this city. I still regularly force myself to remember that condition. For what? To feel the same as Valera now.

“Sasha, I'm sorry, I can’t come today, my card is not clear who has, and I will block it.” Nine years ago, having received such a message, I would be at best confused. In the worst, a pattern from my own childhood would have reproduced, when, it was worth it to fall and break my knee, my grandmother crouched me from above the feeling of guilt and inferiority, recalling that I was an unhealthy, it was my fault, how many times they said not to run, like a wall of peas, new tights tore and so on. Today I close my eyes, I think to ten and write in response: “Well, Valera, come when you can. Only warn in advance. " And in the evening I cook over sauerkraut, because it is Valera’s favorite soup, and food is still his main comfort.

When we only met Valera, he had been asking for a volunteer for several years. He was configured for communication, but for the first one and a half years I call the period of stupid stubborn sitting nearby. Since our acquaintance occurred before the reform of orphan institutions, we could not even go out of the boarding school with him: either we sat in a common gaming one, or wound circles around the corps and in the courtyard. At the same time, at each of my parish, the educators complained about his behavior, failure to study and tried to push him so that I would “fight” him. Every now and then other children ran past us, someone weighed Valera Sickle, someone tried to shock me with a five-story obscenity, someone tried to distract my attention to himself, boasting of a craft or a pattern.

The first one and a half years, I stupidly sat stubbornly next to Valera and held his hand. Then she sat in the same way next to him and held her hand in a children's psychiatric hospital, where in the spring many children were sent either as a punishment or “for prevention”. And only when he was convinced that I would not go anywhere; that I will not stop coming to him, despite what kind of unauthorized he is; That I am not interested in other children, even if they sculpt crafts and draw better than him; That I am ready to go on a minibus to the area for an hour and a half, walk through the forest and withstand two shmons on the passing one, only to sit next to him for fifteen minutes and hold his hand under the supervision of a guard of a psychiatric hospital and a duty nurse - only then Valera began to open up and reach for me in response.

At the age of fifteen, Valera was taken under the guardianship of the foster family, we continued to keep in touch, but we could no longer meet every week, as the conditions of the program require - the foster family lived in another region. Then Katya appeared in my life. She, like Valera, spent his whole life in orphanages, she also had a developmental delay, an injury injury, pedagogical neglect, and in addition it was a slight form of schizophrenia. Katya was a strong nut - I was not the first or even the second volunteer who was to try to find an approach to her. Her condition improved, and the leadership of the orphanage, along with the curator from the volunteer organization, decided to give Katya another chance to avoid moving to PNI after the eighteen years.

Long Story Short: I could not do it. We have vanished the year, and most of the time I visited Katya in a children's psychiatric hospital. She never showed interest in communication with me, the only thing that she asked was transfers. To any refusal, be it a request to bring her cigarettes banned in the hospital or buy something that I was not affordable for me, she reacted with aggression. Then Katya announced to the curator that she did not need a volunteer. On this our relationship ended. Now she lives in PNI and does not want to see me.

I thought that if the method of stupid hard sitting worked nearby with Valera, then one day it would work with Katya. But failure with her showed that stupid perseverance is not always enough and you need to learn to work with difficult adolescents.

After failure with Katya, I was ready to leave the program, but decided to give myself another chance. So in my life Cyril appeared, and then Tanya. All my children are different, and everyone has different needs. Now I participate in the life of each of them in the volume in which they need it. Valera comes to me once or twice a week to wash my things. Sometimes he asks to check his home for the evening school "Up" . I help him deal with debts, accounts, fines, documents for applying for a job. Last year, she went to the courts with him, since his lawyer from the charity organization “Complicity in Fate” could not physically attend the hearings of all his applicants.

Cyril is younger than Valera for a year, but more socialized. For many reasons: he lived in the system most of his life, but not all; He had no development delay; He found the reform of guardianship and was in a more favorable position; In the end, he is much more cunning, worse and more assertive than Valera. He also really waited for a volunteer, but he needed not so much a mentor as a “exit ticket” - they refused to let him out of the orphanage unaccompanied. In the almost three years that we spent with him, he learned to cook, make a list of purchases, use the scales and cash desks of self -service, navigate the subway and make many other household little things that an ordinary person studying, just living in the family. And who are inaccessible to the inhabitants of orphan institutions.

Every time I took him from the orphanage and asked: “What will we do? We take a walk or go to the cinema? ”, He replied:“ Let's go to you, fry the chicken. ” At my house after going shopping, cooking and a joint dinner, he asked to sit on the Internet, and then just picked up a cat in his arms, went to the bed with him, closed his eyes and lay in silence. In the silence and loneliness, which in the orphanage simply does not happen. On the first evening of an independent life after expulsion from the orphanage, he sent me a photograph of boiled pasta with ketchup and fried sausages and messages: “Thank you for teaching me to cook.”

I have not seen Cyril for more than two years. We like to each other photos in social networks, congratulations on each other on the holidays. When he was left without work in Lokdown, he called me and asked for advice on how to get his documents from a former employer and where you can get a job before the end of the quarantine. I follow his life in social networks and is sure: if Cyril has serious problems, he will call me or write.

This is the whole meaning of mentoring: not to control every step - to one degree or another, the guardianship service is engaged in this; Do not entertain and give gifts - this is a path of sponsors and corporate donors; Do not force to study and cut for assessments - there are teachers and educators for this. The meaning of mentoring is to hold the hand. So that the child, and then the teenager, and then the young adult had a person he trusts. Which will not condemn and do not give it, but will support and try to help as much as possible. The point is not to catch the scruff of the scruff and not to fall. And in the way to reach out and help to rise.

For more than two years, almost every Sunday I have been coming to the orphanage, where Tanya is waiting for me. We go for a walk, go to visit me, go to the cinema, attend master classes, discuss boys, ticktos, girlfriends, our mothers (Tanya maintains contact with their mother, although he has been living for three years in an orphanage), pet, travel, recipes, books (she is a rare child who loves to read), films and TV shows, weather, Russian, why in color soles. The cafe is as expensive as prices are formed, from where discounts and sales are taken, which is more profitable: to save or take a loan; Why in the subway there is only one rail, how antibiotics differ from antiviral drugs, how the banking system works and why dogs cannot be sweet. And there are no more many, many things that no one discusses with her or in an orphanage. Because once, they are not supposed, they don’t know how, they don’t know how, they are shy, they don’t want to.

Tanya studies well, looks after younger children in an orphanage, reads not from a stick, kind, responsive, cheerful. But she was taken from her significant adult - mother - and she can see her very rarely. Therefore, another significant adult appeared in her life - me. I am not afraid to show my vulnerability to all my children, the only way you can earn their trust. I never try to fight with the image of a parent in their heads, I try to praise for every little thing, for every, even the smallest achievement. I always take their side in conflicts with educators, teachers, officials. And I always try to put myself in their place and understand what they feel and why they act as they do. The answer is most often one: because they are a product of the orphan system. And this Carthage should be destroyed once.

For more than nine years in charity, I learned to answer all tricky questions that I can ask me. Why is this necessary? Can “schedule friendship” can somehow help the orphanages? Is it not more useful to spend time and money on the salvation of seriously ill children - on medicines, surgery, prostheses, cores? Are these children of effort? And what about this yourself?

In the film about the Zombie Apocalypse of the World of Worlds Z, the hero of Brad Pitt, being in Jerusalem, is surprised that the inhabitants let absolutely all survivors, regardless of nationality and religion. They explain to him: "Each rescued alive is a minus one potential zombie." There, however, everything ended sadly, but for other reasons.

So, I have long left the idea of ​​saving (there was enough about six months in the first orphanage), but I sincerely believe: every orphanage who had a significant adult has one potential inhabitant of the FSIN institution; Minus is one unlawful resident of PNI; minus one line in suicide statistics; minus one easy victim of scammers; Minus one fate crushed by the bureaucratic machine. I can continue the list of potential minus one for a long time. Just because in nine years I saw many children who have become “pluses”, and not “minuses”.

I can no longer imagine life without my children. They teach patience, acceptance, empathy, kindness, responsiveness, resistance. And sometimes they write such messages: “Sasha, thank you that I have you and always try to help me, I love you very much.” And I, Valera, also love you very much.