When I travelled with the shoeboxes last year to Belarus, some of the places we visited, during our short time there were childrens homes, boarding schools for children with educational difficulties, and schools with large numbers of disabled children.
The children's home was huge, hundreds of children all living and learning in one place, and the building was not in a good condition, if any of your children went to school in a building that looked like that, I am sure you would be horrified. And these children weren't just learning there, they were living there as well.
Only 20% of the children in that home were genuine orphans. The other 80% had been removed from their families because of neglect or abuse stemming from drugs and alcohol.
There is a HUGE problem with drugs in Belarus, with many many families affected.
We spent a whole night with these children, playing and delighting over the contents of their boxes, which I can assure you did not contain a single piece of "literature" of any kind.
The other place I want to tell you about was a school in the South of Belarus.
I am sure you all remember the Chernobyl disaster. Although that happened in the Ukraine it was VERY close to the border with Belarus and the prevailing wind took most fo the fallout across belarus.
Children are STILL suffering, with incidences of childhood cancer up by hundredS of percent! We met some of those children, in that school, severely disabled children who will never even learn to read, whose lives will be cut short, whose living conditions are nothing compared to what you would dream of for your children. And to just spend some time with them, seeing the looks of delight, KNOWING that this was the only gift that child would receive that year, because all their families spare money goes on anything that might somehow help their child, I cannot express to you in words how that made me feel.
Imagine your child, never receiving a gift. Not just at Christmas, but all year. And not just one year, but EVER! And imagine, wanting with all your heart to be able to GIVE your child something of their own, somethign they can love, or play with, but not being able to because your circumstances prevent it. not just make it difficult, but prevent it completely!
That's the situation for a lot of the children who receive our boxes.
We're not bad, we're not evil, we care and we want to put a smile on a small child's face.