From the 27th of July to 12th of August a group of 10 international volunteers came to Ukraine in order to organize activities for the handicapped people coming to Raduga rehabilitation centre in Donetsk.

Due to heavy rain and long trips, wet and tired participants arrived to Raduga center. After the participants changed into dry clothes and got a good nights sleep both the weather and the energy in the group got better as the workcamp continued. The first week of the camp the center was closed for renovation and no handicapped people came to the centre. This gave the volunteers plenty of time to get to know each other, brainstorm and plan activities for the following week and learn about SCI and conflict resolution. The volunteers also got the opportunity to contribute to the renovation by painting one of the rooms in the centre.

After a week the center was reopened and all volunteers were ready and eager to start the activities with the handicapped. We wanted to do something different, something to change the routine and make it possible for the handicapped to feel like they had a week holiday. After some name games and get to know each other activities we started to build an airplane and made an imaginary trip around Europe that lasted for 2 days. We visited all the countries were the volunteers came from and made different activities in the different countries. For example, we build the Eiffel tower out of spaghetti when we visited France, in Sweden we celebrated midsummer and in Switzerland we painted the Suisse flag. Another day was the relax day, with massage, facemasks, funny hairstyles, and makeup. We finished the day dressing up for a cocktail party with drinks that we made in the morning. On Friday we had a party day. The day was filled with party games and different dances. On our last full day, the handicapped people put up a show for us. They danced, read poetry, showed 2 collections of dresses and sang for us. The work with the handicapped was very interesting since very few of the volunteers spoke any Russian at all. The volunteers and handicapped people had to learn to communicate with their hands, bodies and facial expressions when they did not have access to any translator. We definitely managed to change the day to day life and give the handicapped a very different type of holiday.

For the volunteers, Raduga workcamp was not all about work. The volunteers also took the opportunity to learn more about different cultures. They lived with Ukrainian families and without language skills tried to understand the Ukrainian way of living. Among the volunteers we also had interesting and intensive discussions about for example abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality. In the evenings we had picnic dinners in the park, we swam in a lake and played the werewolf game. One day we also tried to visit the museum of Donetsk history but unfortunately it was closed for sanitation and we ended up at the art museum and souvenir shop instead. We also had 2 wonderful weekend trips. The first weekend we went to Svyatogorsk, to swim in the river, take a look at the monastery and nice nature. The following weekend the volunteers organized a relaxing trip to the Azov Sea. During the day we swam in the sea, sunbathed, build a sandcastle, walked along the beach and explored the market. During the night we watched the stars, played games, discussed and finally went into our sleeping bags and slept on the beach.

by Maud Gustavsson