On March 23-27, 2000, the Family and Youth Department and the Youth Services Center of the Kyiv oblast state administration and the Pioneers League of Kyiv oblast held the eighth oblast-level festival of the handicapped children and young people called Believe in Yourself. An art exhibition was organized as part of the festival, where the children displayed their best poems, pictures, embroideries, and various handicrafts. These strike one with their inherent energy and will to live.
As the handicapped themselves admit, their biggest problem is communication and the way society treats them. And they must feel very hurt to hear their peers asking: “What, is ‘this one’ also going be in our class?” Yes, children can be cruel, but adults are also sometimes no better. But it is attitude to the disabled that tests a society for courage and nobility. Does our society have the courage to admit the existence of this problem? Is it noble enough to extend a helping hand to people who may differ somewhat from us physically but often surpass us in talent and high moral qualities. More than one problem teen might envy these young people’s enormous desire to live and study. And not a single able-bodied person could stay inside, within the four walls, looking out a window. But this is precisely the life of children for whom to go downstairs is also a problem they often have to face on their own.
All they have in their life is their parents: nobody else needs them. Thus parents have to do several jobs at a great sacrifice to the precious time of communication with their children, which the latter need above all. I do wish this were the only problem in the life of such families. But there also are a host of other everyday problems. Yes, all of us are having hard times, and these families are quite well aware of this. But it is not difficult at all, for example, to find a slot in gymnasium schedules for cerebral-paralysis-affected children to have free classes or at least to give them access to school computers, which would greatly facilitate their creativity. You can’t attend a sports society or buy a computer on a meager disability pension. What is needed is only a small thing: a slip of paper and somebody’s wish. Parents are ready to work with their children but are deprived of the opportunity. But parents are not eternal, so what is in store for these youngsters? At best, an endless drudge of take-home work and helplessness on the streets and public transport unfit for the handicapped. There are absolutely no privileges for apartment rental, utility charges, etc. It is simply terrible to think what these people will face at worst.
The annual festival in question is a helping hand to them. It means communication, care, the feeling of not being alone in this world, and awareness that they are also needed by somebody besides their parents. The festival is the only place where they can reveal their talent and, even more, mix with each others like them as well as with those who come to meet them. These people will never give them a skeptical or vicious look. They believe in these children and the children in turn believe them. One of the main tasks of our state today is not to let the handicapped children’s talents die unmarked and see to it that they have more fetes like this.
