Life skills
Encouraging Natasha to Dream
- Life Skills summer camp
- Nastia (right) watching a friend
- Hanging out
- Nastasha (left) with friend
- Karen (middle) from CBN Kiev
- Fun with bubbles!
CBN.com - Natasha hopes to become a teacher one day. She wants to study hard and learn English, so she can achieve her dreams. But Natasha is an orphan in Ukraine, and statistics show that Natasha will probably end up on the street or in prostitution- repeating the cycle of her parents. Thankfully, the CBN World Reach staff in Kiev works hard to defeat the grim statistics.
During a recent week-long life skills summer camp, Natasha and 649 other orphaned teenagers like her were taught skills for life beyond the orphanage. A team of 10 young adult Christians traveled from Kiev to Nikolaev to encourage and teach the teenagers how to make wise decisions.
Each day leaders met small groups and taught lessons from the Life Skills Curriculum for youth, a unique curriculum which was developed by staff at the CBN World Reach office in Kiev to meet the growing needs of orphaned teens. Each day the lessons focused on ways to transition from an orphanage to independent living. Lessons included information on identity, social skills, love and sex, job skills, and time and money management.
To the surprise of the leaders, each day the kids would rush to the lessons and sit attentively - excited to learn from their new friends. Natasha was among these eager students and never missed one lesson! On the first day, the leaders gave out workbooks to each of the students which contained the lessons and worksheets for the entire week.
On the second day of class Natasha came back and said, "This is all so interesting and helpful. I read the whole book already!"
At the end of camp, the leaders were amazed at how much these orphans shared about their broken childhoods and their desires for the future. Nastia, 15, could not control her emotions or tears on the day when the leaders were leaving.
“Why do all the uninteresting and boring groups come for the whole summer and then the really wonderful people who care about us come for only a week?” Nastia wondered.
Although a week is a short time to touch the hearts of teens which have spent the majority of their lives in an orphanage, God was using His servant leaders to shine hope and encouragement by teaching life skills. The success of this camp has leaders already beginning preparations for next year’s two-week summer camp!
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