Hundreds of volunteers from 50 countries arrived in Ukraine to participate in yet another season of Go Camp, a program that brings foreigners to teach foreign languages to Ukrainian students.
The season was launched with a symbolic act, a presentation of a world map with messages written by volunteers and attached to the countries they are from. The presentation took place on Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square in Kyiv on June 7.
The world map was created to symbolize Ukraine’s openness to the world and gratitude to Go Camp volunteers, who make a valuable contribution to the development of the country.
“Today we want to visualize the fact that Ukraine is becoming the center of the European volunteer movement,” Oksana Nechyporenko, the director of the Global Office, a non-profit running the program, told the Kyiv Post.
Go Camp was launched in 2016 aimed at promoting foreign language learning and developing the volunteer movement in Ukraine. The program brings volunteers from all over the world to Ukraine’s urban and rural schools in summer. They teach local kids English and other foreign languages.
Since the program’s start, 1,356 Ukrainian schools in 450 cities and villages hosted summer Go Camps with around 144,000 children and 850 volunteers that participated.
According to the Go Camp’s team, it is the biggest volunteer program in Eastern Europe.
This summer, there will be three sessions of summer camps.
Apart from the language learning side, the program has a goal to develop intercultural dialogue in the country.
Lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem, who is the co-founder of Go Global, says that many people in Ukraine haven’t ever met a foreigner.
“For them, talking to a foreign person is to cross the barrier: they haven’t seen people with another color of skin or person of other race,” Nayyem says. “This program is an opportunity to teach everyone.”
According to the team of Go Camp, the program wants to raise future Ukrainian leaders and ambassadors to the world.
“Our goal is 1.5 million Ukrainian kids who know English. For now, we have only 60,000 graduates. So we have a lot to do,” Nayyem says.
Volunteers
The program’s participants come to volunteer in Ukraine for various reasons. Some have come to contribute to the country’s development.
Chen Xen, a volunteer from Israel in his 20s, says he arrived in Ukraine two years after the EuroMaidan Revolution, which drew Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power. Moved by the revolutionary events, Xen was looking for a way to help.
“I asked myself what can I do for society in Ukraine and I found this project and I fell in love with it,” Xen told the Kyiv Post.
Other participants, like Rachad Abou Salhab Aboultaif from Columbia, are experienced volunteers who enjoy helping others in any corners of the world. Aboultaif has worked voluntarily in seven countries before. This year, he will teach English in two Ukrainian villages and towns in Odesa and Zhytomyr oblasts.
“When I volunteer, I feel happy,” Aboultaif told the Kyiv Post. “I want to make a small change in the world,” he says.
And other volunteers join the program in order to get to know Ukraine better.
Alexis Audonnet, 19, a French volunteer will take part in Go Camp for the second time this year.
Although he doesn’t have Ukrainian roots, Audonnet speaks Ukrainian and has a bug for the local culture.
“I met Ukrainian people and became immediately interested in this culture,” Audonnet told the Kyiv Post.
He says that he knows poems by Ukrainian poets Taras Shevchenko and Volodymyr Sosiura. He also loves Ukrainian music and listens to such bands as YUKO, Kazka, Okean Elzy and Tse Sho.
The volunteer learns Ukrainian at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris. He says that it’s the only place where students can learn Ukrainian in France.
Audonnet found out about Go Camp from his university teacher of Ukrainian. During the program, the volunteer will teach scholars French.
“It is my pleasure to teach the French language to Ukrainian children, to share my culture with them and to let them know that there are people in France who are interested in Ukraine. I dream about creating an NGO in the future, I want French people to know more about Ukraine.”
