Kitezh newsletter from 14 – 26th of October
We welcome you, dear friends of the Kitezh newsletter! A warm autumn allowed us not only to enjoy the weather, but also to accomplish lots of useful things. For example, a team of Kitezh men finished the extension of foster mother Masha Krivenkova’s house, and then over the next few days to build a roof. So, now there only indoor decoration remains to be done – then the foster family will be able to welcome guests into their new spacious kitchen. Next in line for building projects is the insulation of Tamara Pichugina’s house and the Pyramid. Overall, thanks to Maksim Anikeeva and his team our building work is well under way.
In Orion, Dima Andreev has finished the extension to his house so he can take new foster children into his family.
Last week all of the older children from Kitezh went to Orion to take part in a joint project with pupils from the Anglo-American school. Together, they tidied the school building, ordered the classrooms and decorated the art therapy room. There was only a little time, but they achieved a great deal!
Dmitrii Morozov continues to be very active in Moscow, lecturing, taking part in television and radio programmes. If you wish to find out more about what he is doing, you can go to the following address: www.geki.ru.
Our colleagues Masha Pichugina and Masha Krivenkova returned from their education trip to the UK. Their travelling was very intensive: London and an English professional conference on the topic of working with difficult children; a week of experience in the Findhorn Community and a week of meetings with Scottish therapeutic organizations, prepared by our consultant David Dean. During the trip the two Mashas had a series of meetings in which they shared their observations and impressions. Our colleagues from Britain gave us their opinion: “Kitezh can teach us how to work with children”. We ourselves are planning to use the experience we gained abroad, and to share it with other organizations in Russia.
Children’s news: Slava Klimov led a master class in cartoon animation and spoke about his own works; the children were very interested, and now Slava is expecting new drawings and assistant-animators. We would remind you that the committee of foster families in the Kaluga region has banned a series of cartoons about the relation between children and adults.
The psychological game ‘I’m building the world’ continues, and three of our children (Sasha Argunov, Sasha Eremin and Svyatoslav Morozov) became ‘students’, having truly shown their independence and responsibility for their words and actions – we congratulate them!
An art studio has opened in Kitezh, headed by Lena Chuklina. Now any child or adult can go there and express themselves through drawing or modeling and create individual works of art.
From next week the Kitezh children’s paper begins, and we will try to include an electronic version on the website. Watch this space!
Guests: we have been visited by two journalists: Fiona, from the BBC in Scotland, and Vasilii, who works for ‘Novaya gazeta’ in Moscow. As usual, Kitezh is arousing interest and making a great impression.
Representatives from the Victoria fund, long time friends and collaborators of ours, visited us this week. We discussed the prospect of further collaboration.
This weekend we are expecting representatives of the law firm Baker Botts, who help us with our student programme, as well as visits from Francesca, Esther and their friends from the British Embassy. We are planning to tell them our news and enjoy the performance of ‘Master’ in English. We will tell you more in the next newsletter.
Volunteers: Andrew Aikman returned from Scotland and brought with him a whole exhibition of photographs of Kitezhans, both children and adults, taken by his daughter. They are now being exhibited in our canteen. Rosie is occupied with professional translation material, brought from Scotland by Masha and Masha. Honesty is very successful with her teaching. Julian and David work and entertain us with live music from time to time.
Events: On the 27th of October Vladislav Terentev turns 45. He has dedicated the last 15 years to Kitezh. We wish him a happy birthday and are very happy to pass on your good wishes!
Goodbye
