In July 2023 we sent 9 of our vonunteers to a summer camp for young people in Ukraine (mostly teenagers). It was a Christian camp organized by a church, but since it was a youth camp in the first place, it was about having fun, building relationships, exploring other cultures, and obviously learning English.
We lived on the outskirts of Lviv, and helped the hosts: our friends from the Grapevine church in Lviv and from Josiah Venture (Igor Granatiuk, Juliana Law, Tomasz Chmiel, etc).
We did quite a lot. From assembling young people in line to driving one of the stuff home after curfew. We tought English, ran workshops, games, activities, shared our life stories and provided all sort of assistance to our Ukrainian friends.
The camp was extremally intense, not to mention there was a war going on. Those camps in Ukraine have usually few guest teachers from USA. That year, in the middle of the war, they had hard time with finding even one brave enough to cross the ocean. So they couldn’t believe that we sent 9 people.
Obviously, there were some tensions between east and west, different styles of running things or setting balance between freedom and order (we love freedom a lot!). But love goes a long way and we’ve seen it. We loved helping, we loved teaching and we loved those kids.
Good times. We will never forget that camp.
All volunteers from To Be Happy on the last day of the camp
Follow-up of the camp
Festival of colors
People of colors
How to produce shoes from used tires
Can you see stereograms? Actually, nobody could
Most advanced English class with Martin
English lessons with Daniel
Lowest level (but most fun) English lessons with Dominika
Body painting. The tattoos were not permanent, don’t worry
A friendly game of chess. Poland vs Ukraine.