Painting at Hospital for Kids

Its been great being a volunteer, but sometimes it doesn't seem like enough. In fact, this is how most volunteers feel - we want to see our results, something tangible/instantaneous. However, this is not how volunteering in Russia works. As volunteers, we are here to make a small difference in someone elses life whether it be with a smile, hug or laughter. It's the small things in life that matter to these people. However, the new group of volunteers and myself wanted to do something more tangible, we wanted to get our hands dirty. So, Svyetlana, the GREAT counselor at Hospital for kids, suggested we could paint the doors. This task seems small, but the doors were in dire need of a new paint job and we couldn't have been more thrilled to do it!!

Let me just note, Cross Cultural Solutions has a policy of NO gift giving. If volunteers were to give gifts, placements would then become dependent on volunteers, and therefore creates an unsustainable volunteer program.

By us painting the doors, we were not gift giving. We bought all the necessary supplies out of our own pocket and once we were done painting we then took all remaing supplies back home with us.

We scraped, puttied and painted 4 doors which only took us about 3 hours. It felt great to get our hands dirty for once! Syvetlana, the GREAT counselor, who the Kids respect and adore was right there with us the whole way. Margo, a volunteer who speaks Russian, was our translator. For only having 2 years of Russian, she is GREAT!! She translated between ourselves and Svyetlana, who was joking around with us. It was a lot of fun!! By the time we were finished, Svyetlana was incredibly grateful that we took the time and money to paint the doors, but we were grateful that we could do something for them!! It was a great experience.