Bears to get Better

As children, we were fortunate enough to have had parents that raised us with their love. Now as parents, we love our children as our parents did, and are convinced that no child should be deprived of the affection and warmth of a family.

The association was formed by a group of friends that through an extraordinary series of events had the opportunity to visit a small youth shelter in the Ukranian city of Ivankov in the Kijevskaja province, which is about 50 km from Chernobyl.

After being greeted by a cloud of children, we were accompanied and introduced to everyone living at the institute by an excellent interpreter in the shape of a seven year old girl, Irina, who spoke, given her previous experiences in hospitality, in addition to her Russian mother tongue, nearly perfect both Spanish and Italian.

The sincere and inquiring smiles that exalted the faces of these children is a very strong image that we will never forget and that gave birth and motivation to our association.

A smile, either because it is too costly, or doesn’t cost enough, has no price, but seeing these children smile makes us rich.

Even Galia, the Director of the shelter and mother to all the children, had an enormous smile in her eyes and was very understanding of our gentle intrusion, during which we noted with much surprise, how just as in a normal family, the children adore her.

Like many other associations, we try to arrange therapeutic hospitality projects with Italian families for these children, but in addition we also attempt to make their lives better in the home that hosts them while waiting for a definitive placement.

Their smiles, the look in their eyes, full of hope seemed to scream,

I’M ALIVE

And this is the scream that causes us to ask ourselves: are we alive, or are we waiting for the mortal game called life to take its natural course. What can we do to continue to live and not simply to survive. As an association we are children, or maybe even newborns, but we hope together to grow and to be able to say that we too lived smiling.