Once again the Volunteer School was invited to hospitable Donbas. This time our destination was the Central Municipal Library of Bakhmut (former Artemivsk), the town of millions of roses and sincere Ukrainian patriots. The Library gained the grant of the International Organisation of Migration, thus it had a possibility to improve its resources and organise various educational and cultural events for local community and internally displaced people of Bakhmut. On August 15^th – 31^st, it hosted a language camp for children between 10 and 14 years old.

The camp was organised by Ph. D. Oksana Pysareva, the lecturer of Horlivka Institute of Foreign Languages, displaced to Bakhmut, with the assistance of other colleagues and students of the Institute, the Head of the Library Tetiana Belenko and library staff, the Youth Academy of Literature and Journalism headed by well-known Donbas poet Natalia Kovalska, and the staff of the local ethnographical museum.

The children of Bakhmut and IDPs could not only improve their skills in English for free before the beginning of a new school year, but also take part in a great number of absorbing intellectual and sports games and, of course, make new friends.

NGO “Poruch” expert Nadia Govorun also met with the participants of the camp, together they discussed the key objectives of volunteering, played the quest “Following Volunteer Routes”, completed a series of interactive tasks, watched PowerPoint and video presentations in English.

Also NGO “Poruch” invited the guests from Petrykivka Vocational School № 79, Dnipropetrovsk region, with master classes of Petrykivka-style decorative painting. Due to the enthusiasm and devotion of the Head of the School Victor Bilokin, his teachers and students, the camp participants were involved in the mystery of creating masterpieces. All camp events were skillfully described by young journalists of the Youth Academy in the special issues of the camp newspaper. The most active participants of the camp activities were awarded with prizes of our unfailing sponsor TM “Askold”. And happy smiles of the children of Ukrainian Donbas were the best award for the organising team!