Healing Smiles for Children with Cancer

We started art-therapy lessons in the children department of the National Institute of cancer in Kiev City in March 2010. There were about 8 lessons for that 3 months. We have 6 volunteers at present involved in the project and coming in pairs to children department. Children with joy are making origami and kirigami. On March 8 what is Women's Day in Ukraine children made beautiful paper flowers for their moms. On May 15 what is International family day children together with their parents were preparing small house passionately choosing colour for its roof and door and drawing their family on it. There are 57 children in the department now. But many of them are bed patients, laying under droppers and are not able to stand up and come for lessons. So we usually start our lesson in the department hall, gathering those chidren who can walk, and hold 45 minutes lesson. After it we go ward by ward to greet all children and to make small art-therapy for those who are in beds. So volunteers usually spend 2-3 hours with children trying to encourage them and give them some joy and hope. We are really grateful to our donors. For first donations made we could buy some art-therapy sets for our lessons: origami paper, albums, scissors, paints, pencils and glue. Our main goal now is to prepare for Sand-Art workshop in October and festival in the end of the year. The festival will be like the resume of our 1-year work on the project. We want to make it as a big event with children works exhibition, musical entertainments and children attending the festival together with their families.

Links:

• The article on our website