The main characters in Lukes version of the Christmas story are Mary and the child. Joseph takes a back seat to the angel's visit, and in the end, it is Mary who ponders all things and treasures them in her heart. Mary is celebrated for her love for Jesus. Not all children receive such love.
" When we left the shelter, I saw Anya (name changed) sitting on the bench alone. I asked what happened. Anya said that everything was normal. I said that I did not believe it and asked her to share with me. Anya said quietly that she was tired of this life, she wants to leave the shelter and live with her mother, but her mother does not want her and does not need her. "my mother thinks only of herself." Anya said. It is true. Her mother left her and her sister at an orphanage. She is indifferent to what they feel."
-Alla Soroka, from report for Nov 2011.
It's a common story among neglected youth in Ukraine.... there is more to tell below. But first please know that I join that list of folks who are
asking for donations as the year comes to a close. Yulia and I are pictured above in New York (photo by Justin Balding) visiting Wall St. over Thanksgiving. We have been in the states for over a year now while I direct the program of This Child Here through folks working in Ukraine.
On the homepage of our website is a place on the left to donate by way of
Pay Pal. You can send $25, $50, or $100 or more. You don't need a PayPal account to donate; you can choose "Check Out" and then "Don't have a PayPal account". Either way, it's safe, but if you prefer to mail a check, please send it to:
This Child Here,
245 Seaview Ave,
Daytona Beach,
FL 32118
Below, children and staff do the trust walk in a training in an orphanage in the early fall.
This photo is important. In it you see three
girls. The girl on the right used to live on the streets, but now goes to college. Her tuition is paid for by This Child Here. The other two are sisters and grew up in an orphanage, and now live at The Way Home. They are beginning technical schools. The fourth person at the table is Alla Soroka; she is taking the picture. The tab for tea is picked up by This Child Here. Lots of problems can be solved over tea and conversation in a real cafe.
Here, Alla Soroka who runs our program in Ukraine, stands with two girls from a local orphanage. You have heard it before, but here is what we do:
-Support street kids and social orphans in Odessa with clothes, dental care, after school activities, and camp supplies in cooperation with the Odessa charity, The Way Home
-Fund the tuition and books of social orphans to university (We have one student so far)
-Funded construction of a roof for the Christian orphanage Novovolinsk.
-With training provided by the Quaker program (Alternative to Violence), send teams into Orphanages and shelters throughout the Odessa region to work with children on issues of Personal Boundaries, Addictions, Self esteem, Identity and Life in Community.
-Provide small groups for "at risk" boys and girls in two local public schools.
-Shipped bicycles to build self-esteem and teach a trade to social orphans.
-Make connections with local faith communities and Christian camps.
I close with this. In the fall of 2010, a girl named Vika took her life when she jumped from a building. You can read the story if you scroll 
down to : JUNE NEWS 2011
When Vika was 15, I and some other adults took a bus load of kids some six hours across Ukraine to the city of Donetsk. We went to attend a beauty contest; our candidate Ms Odessa was running for Ms Donetsk and to our surprise, won the title by simply wearing a bathing suit and several other outfits and walking around the open stage in front of twenty thousand screaming young people. So Vika was with us; she had already run from the shelter once and come back, marked as a kid on the fringes.
We got up early, made the trip, spent the day and came back late at night. It was August, a hot day turning cooler at night, the bus was crowded with kids, bags piled up in the aisle and boxes of food. Everything had to be carried to minimize the money spent. The bus was swaying ,the windows open, everyone was tired, I somehow commandeered half the back seat of the bus. I was laying on my back asleep. I woke when someone's head landed on my chest. It was Vika. This, of course, is not the kind of story you tell to the Committee on Ministry, after a training on appropriate personal boundaries for clergy. But I'll tell you what I did, and I'm so proud of it. I reached up in that swaying bus with both arms and held her still. It was a beautiful thing, one of most beautiful things I did in a place of so much ugliness... I wish she were alive so I could do it again. Do a beautiful thing, this Christmas: give to the programs of children.
Grace and Peace this Christmas,
Robert Gamble
This is Alyona. What I like about this photo, (taken by Audrey Ball), aside from the heavenly aura, is how clean she looks: white shirt, face and hair scrubbed. It's been a long journey since June 10, 2009, the day I met her, when at age 11, she left the streets to live at The Way Home. (see below)
[
Thanks to a generous donor, This Child Here paid for this roof to be laid on this orphanage for 25 children in Novovolinsk. They are now building a second orphanage for 100 children. This orphanage was founded by a church. Kids get good personal attention.
This camp near Simferople (see below) is also funded and run by churches. Each year 400 children attend from throughout Ukraine.
This is Mariyam, our student from The Way Home who now attends University. Plans are for her to come to the USA next summer, take a job, experience the states, better her english and make a little money. She's a hard worker. If you can offer her a job, please write me: robertgam@gmail.com.
Much of our energy goes toward what we call, Trainings. Our team of three goes to an orphanage to work with kids on issues of personal boundaries (sex and violence), addictions (glue and alcohol), self esteem and life in community. Here is a boy to the left, the faces of the children, of Alla who leads these teams and Andre one of her team members.
What is important about the picture to your left is that this is a family we now work with. We know Sasha, the blond haired boy from his days at the shelter The Way Home. This is his mother and brother. All other children we work with live in shelters or orphanages or institutions, so this is our first family. We have high hopes.
Finally, for most of the past five weeks, I have been traveling: Memphis, Ft Worth, Portland, Albuquerque and Farmington New Mexico, New Orleans, Asheville, Altanta, down into Florida, through Raleigh NC and home. I have been speaking in churches and thanking supporters. If I have not said it to you in person, thank you. Thank you for your support: financial, emotional, spiritual. I would like This Child Here to be a project you are proud of.
Grace and Peace,
Robert Gamble
Do you remember that film Ground Hog Day where Bill Murray wakes up to the same horrible, no good, very bad day over and over.... Well, from May 11th, 2011 when the first really, really bad news hit, until the first part of of June, I woke up each morning and remembered the following:
-I was told it would cost $8,000 to clear my 84 used bicycles through customs in Odessa, Ukraine;
-if I didn’t do something about the bikes sitting at the port, the cost of storage was going to be $100 a day;
-it wasn’t any good for me to say, “Ok, I don’t want the bikes, you can have them!” because I would be billed for storage fees and face that bill if I ever I returned.
What happened? I basically wrote everyone I knew. I had one man investigating bicycles as, “humanitarian aid,” another contact trying to take them to Romania, another to Moldova. I had a quote to bring them back to the USA. I called the Peace Corps. I called Bikes not Bombs and Pedals for Progress both nonprofits that take bicycles overseas, “Do you guys have an projects in Ukraine?” Not yet. Then, in all those emails, one came back that had promise. Keith Oberg of Bikes for the World, wrote to say a business man named Evgeny had written him a year ago, wanting to start a project with them. He might be interested. I wrote; he was. Soon after, the former Ms. Odessa (who has become a friend and helps with kids) sent me the name of a trustworthy shipping broker she knew. The Customs fee dropped to a fraction of what it was; Evgeny picked up all port costs and transportation to his city, and in the photo below, he is unloading bicycles in Berdichev. There is an orphanage there; the Peace Corps has two volunteers there. I have great hopes now of getting social orphans at work on bicycles.
To all of you who donated bicycles, thank you, thank you, thank you. In the photos, see Evgeny (blue sleeveless t-shirt) unloading bicycles in Berdichev, Ukraine.
Robert Gamble
In August of 2005 on my first trip to Ukraine, I was with a team of social workers. We climbed the side of an abandoned building , crossed the tar roof and entered a room with five children. One girl, I guessed to be fifteen sat on a mattress, her back to the wall. While the team was talking with the other four, I looked at her and motioned with my camera. "May I?" I said. She nodded and I stepped in front of her. At first I just crouched to make a picture.... but she seemed so completely at ease with this that I sat down about six feet away, cross-legged. One click of the shutter then another and another.... the final frames revealed the slightest smile.
You would have to be a photographer to understand what I mean when I say that something happens between shooter and subject, a kind of understanding can be achieved without words. Permission is given, approval. In seconds, a relationship was established between me and Vika. I took the memory of this moment and these images along with thousands of others back to the states.
You don’t need to be a photographer to understand the power of images. I looked at them again and again; I thought about this girl who lived on the streets. If I were to pick a moment as a photographer that called it for me, when I felt certain, this was what I wanted to do for the next stage of my life. It would be that moment, not because I decided then, but because I kept looking back to it... that small room in an abandoned building, seated a few feet from Vika. A year later, I left the pastorate and moved to Ukraine to start This Child Here.
In that period of time, she left the streets and moved into a shelter for kids called The Way Home where I kept an office. She stayed for a while, then left, then came back again. She got pregnant; she got an abortion. She got a job; I heard she was living with some relative on the south side of the town. From time to time, she would come into the office and show herself to me, always when she had clean clothes and looked her best. Then I lost touch. Last week, while on a visit to Odessa and The Way Home and in the middle of a lot of worries about a shipment of used bicycles, I was standing next to my “wall of photos” of street kids. A girl from the streets who was in office pointed up to Vika’s photo and said, “She died.”
“What, who? Vika? How?”
“She jumped... off a building.”
I asked around... and learned she had been to a clinic for patients with STD's and that she was pregnant.
Others have died: Last fall, Elvira jumped from a building to her death. Losha hung himself; Taras died from an injection of drugs into his neck; Tolik froze to death last winter. Igor died in August after he took a handful of pills and downed it with vodka. But the death of Vika takes me back to the beginning, to my first connection to a child on the streets and first hopes for one of them. And her death impels me all the more to attend to other kids who are “at risk.”
Here is another photo. I don't know the name of this girl, but I took her picture two weeks ago, while attending a training we were doing in an orphange for kids who are at risk. This is the place where work needs to be done. Kids come and go in shelters and orphanges. They often cycle from orphanage to streets, to prison, to streets again. On the streets they can make poor choices. These trainings focus on Self-Esteem, Personal Boundaries, Addictions, and Life in Community. We hope for a level of conversation that leads to emotional healing and healthy choices in life. We hope to build something on the inside, a stronger, more resilient child, a child with the desire and skill to choose to live.
Grace and peace,
Robert Gamble
This is Gary Payton on his visit to the work of This Child Here in Odessa, Ukraine. I know it doesn't look like he is working, because this is the famous opera house in Odessa, but really, he packed a lot into a few days.
Gary is the Presbyterian Church liaison for Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Poland, working with a number of projects and denomination in those countries. You can read more about him and his interesting background at: http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/missionconnections/payton-gary/
He met with Sergey Kostin (shown here at right) at The Way Home, the charity I work with in Odessa; he visited the orphanage in Fontanka. Both of these locations will be receiving bicycles. He sat for coffee with Sergei Bermas, (shown below) who is my pastor when I am in Odessa. Gary saw the school Mariyam attends and walked the streets of the city, all the while hosted by our psychologist, Alla Soroka who leads trainings for This Child Here in shelters and orphanages of that city.
I am so pleased, of course, because it was a moment of recognition for This Child Here by the General Assembly Mission Council of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Then here we are loading bikes to ship to Odessa, Ukraine. Volunteers from Port Orange and First Presbyterian Churches stacked 84 bicycles into a shipping container that went on to Savannah and then to Odessa, arriving by May 4th. Yulia and I took 5 days to drive down in a pickup truck loaded with bikes from Maryland to add to those from Florida, and drive back to Cumberland.
Thank you to all who contributed bicycles. There were some I was not able to pick up on this trip, so I will find a way to gather them for next year. Next year, my hope is to partner with Bikes for the World in Maryland. They do this for a living and can save us time and money.
Now, two films. The first is the trailer of a film by Regina Maryanovska to be shown in at the New York International Film and Video Festival, April 28-May 5th. Regina was born in Odessa, but lives in France. I am familiar with all these kids, as they lived at the shelter, The Way Home, where we do much of our support work. It's subtitled in English. If you want to know what these kids think, watch it. Later, after the festival, I will post a link to the entire film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxZEj5TJRnc
The second film was done by the British news service, (language rated R) The Guardian, and titled "Ukraine's lost children." "Film-maker Antony Butts spent a week living with Odessa's homeless children - and with the police unit tasked with tracking down their hiding places in old water pipes, under manholes and in derelict buildings."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/apr/05/ukraine-lost-children-video
Most of the scenes are taken from regions near the big market (where my apartment was) and from a location near the port. I know both Fila and Vanya; I don't know the police officers. It's shocking to see where these kids live and hear what they say.
Finally, here are photos of kids from The Way Home, together at a training done by Alla (right) . Then a picture of Mariyam at University (below in the blue). Alyona (last photo below) is living now at an orphanage. As life at the orphanage is often depressing and lonely, kids from The Way Home go to visit her to keep her spirits up. Here she is in the middle on the left. Alla has taken them out for tea.
Two days after Easter Sunday, Yulia and I fly to Ukraine to spend three weeks. We will meet the bicycles and see that project started, visit orphanages, greet old friends at The Way Home.
grace and peace this Easter Season,
Robert Gamble
Director, This Child Here
www.thischildhere.org
cell in the states 828 318 2149
By Robert Gamble
In January two children died. I knew the boy personally; the girl, I did not, but kids I know, knew her well. Elvira(pronounced Elveera) was sixteen. She jumped from the 7th floor and took her life. Vanya, was struck by a car. In a facebook message I received from her sister, Sabina, I learned that Sabina held Elvira as she died. I don't know more about the circumstances of Vanya's death, but I know well his brother Kolya, and I know that both boys are from Moldova and have traveled back and forth over the past years. Odessa draws a number of kids from Moldova, the poorest country in the former Soviet Union.
The first thought we often have is, who is to blame? But these kids have a will of their own and even by age thirteen their lives are often out of control. The better question is "What can we do?"
I wish every child had a loving home and family life. That would be my first choice of things to do. I wish there was no need for shelters and orphanages, that all homeless children were either adopted by or placed in foster care with loving families in their native country. I wish they were in healthy homes with their biological families, but none of this is going to happen in the years soon to come.
- Vanya, March 2010 and
- (right, summer 2001)
For that reason, funds for This Child Here go toward help for children in shelters and orphanages. We pay for a psychologist (Alla) to work with children at the shelter: The Way Home. We pay another psychologist (Olga) to work with "at risk kids" in public school. We pay for teams to go into orphanages to help kids with personal boundaries, addictions, self-esteem and life in community. We pay for clothes and after school programs to help kids feel good about themselves. I hope that through a program of bicycle repair, some kids will learn responsibility and even a career.
Can you donate a good used bicycle? It is tax deductible. These should be used bikes and can be many years old but they need to have been good quality, mountain bikes or road bikes. We cannot take Huffy or heavy steel frame bikes as the market in Ukraine is already flooded with them. I am hoping to collect 200 bikes from individuals and churches in the southeast. If you have a bike, please email me: robertgam@gmail.com
- workshop with Ann in orphanage
-
- Workshop with Alla in orphanage
- Alla counseling at The Way Home
.
I close with the mention of a film: A Year of Living Dangerously. (1982, Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt). The scene is Indonesia, 1965, a country on the edge of revolution. Early on, Hamilton, the Australian journalist meets Billy Kwan, the Indonesian press photographer and narrator of the film, whose secret desire is to expose the deplorable conditions of life in Indonesia.
As the two walk the streets, Billy Kwan gestures to the poor, "And the people asked Him, saying, 'What shall we do then?'"
Hamilton: What's that?
- (New clothes for boy at The Way Home)
Kwan: It's from Luke. Chapter 3, verse 10. What then must we do?" Tolstoy asked the same question. He wrote a book with that title. He got so upset about the poverty in Moscow...that he went one night into the poorest section...and just gave away all his money. You could do that now. Five American dollars would be a fortune to one of these people.
Hamilton: It wouldn't do any good. Just be a drop in the ocean.
Kwan: Ah. That's the same conclusion Tolstoy came to.
Hamilton: What's your solution?
Kwan: Well, I support the view that you just don't think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery that's in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light.
- In Cumberland, MD with donated bike
By Robert Gamble on January 4th, 2011
Christmas and New Years underground 2008
Christmas/New Years underground 2006
Two years ago, the Discovery Channel (United Kingdom), came to Odessa, Ukraine. They rode on the street patrol of The Way Home (www.streetkidsodessa.com) . Because of copyright laws, I suppose, the English version is not available; the Russian version is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEiAG1sfNsw
If you click the link and then scroll into the video 7 minutes, you will soon see me under the streets with a group of kids who live beneath a local bank. The boy in the pink pajamas with the cigarette and sniffing glue is Artur. He was ten. I believe it was his birthday. Sorry it’s not in English, but you can overhear much of what I say. This is an example of the kinds of street patrols I make as I work in cooperation with The Way Home, the Odessa Charity that seeks out street kids and offers shelter. The journalist mistakenly calls me the Director of The Way Home; in reality, I am a volunteer for them as all my work is funded by This Child Here. See real director below.
The real director of The Way Home: Sergey Kostin
In August, I used $500 of funds from This Child Here to pay two defense lawyers on behalf of this boy, Sasha. Sasha was arrested for stealing a television and several other items. I simply wanted a fair trial. As you can see from this translation of an email from our friend Vitali, the lawyer on staff with The Way Home, on December 14th, Sasha was released on probation. Vitali was writing to my wife, “Julenka” is friendly way of saying “Yulia”.
Sasha pictured with Ann at Christian camp summer 2010
Greetings, Julenka!
I decided to write to you because there is a good news. On December, 14th, was the release from a pre-trial detention center, Sashu Gavrilova. The court has pronounced to him a sentence in the form of conditional punishment, that is one year of a trial period on freedom. If he in this time commits a crime, the court will sentence him to a minimum of 5 years.
Sasha now lives with us here, in the shelter “The Way Home “, while we decide on the question on of his transfer to the Kishinev rehabilitation center where are his buddy-fellow countrymen. So tell please this joyful news to Robert, and also that the lawyer which services have been paid by Robert, in my opinion, has fairly fulfilled the fee.
-Vitali
I continue enjoy my work as the Interim Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Cumberland, Maryland and at the same time feel the pinch of guilt for leaving Ukraine. But we haven’t the resources for us to continue to live there and at the same time fund our projects. This will be a different year as I seek more funding, collect bicycles and rely on staff people in Ukraine to carry out the work.
Alla's team has boys play a game at the orphanage in Fontanka
Alla in blue sweater and team with kids at a local orphanage
Team member Andre with boys at Fontanka
These photos show our latest work in Fontanka, an orphanage for boys on the north side of Odessa, and an earlier picture of Alla Soroka and her team who lead these programs which address issues of Addiction, Personal Boundaries, Self Esteem and Life in Community (Love).
Team member with boys at Fontanka
And finally, below is a photo taken two years ago during the week of Christmas/New Years. Yulia and I were underground visiting a group of kids living there.
Grace and peace to you and yours this Christmas and New Year’s season.
Robert Gamble
January 4th, 2011
To go back and read all prior newsletters go to my Blogspot
or paste: http://robert-gamble.blogspot.com/ into your browser
As I have changed webservers, unfortunately, many pictures are no longer there.
Sometimes, it is addressed by talking about the sublimation of sexual energy, (the diversion of sexual energy into activities). O____ is dancing, so she should not worry about it and is very active. She was glad that she is doing well."
