Games, foot races, outdoor snacks, jokes, small art workshops, times for reflection, moments of sharing, opportunities for growth through service... What has been happening in every oratory for centuries, and especially in the summer, in more relaxed times as a break from normal activities, the Sons of Don Bosco intend to offer it, for a week, starting today, also in Kyiv.
They also launched the initiative with a video, circulated on social networks. The first recipients are the children, girls and boys met through the itinerant oratories' experience, which began as soon as the war loosened its grip a bit on the capital and the villages around it.
"We go to the villages in the northwestern part of the Kyiv region, which have been occupied by the Russian army for almost two months, and we offer our presence to the children who have stayed here and have been victims of this war," explained the Rector of the Salesian community in Kyiv, Fr. Maksym Ryabukha, who is also the one who is organizing the whole thing.
But it is not only the Ukrainian capital that is affected by this proposal. To remain faithful to Don Bosco's legacy of serving young people, and among them, the most needy, in the coming weeks similar camps will also be set up in other realities among the most war-torn, in the Chernobyl area and the Poltava region in a village where refugee families are hosted.
Despite the difficulties of carrying out such initiatives in a country still suffering from bombings and aggression, Fr. Ryabukha and his team of collaborators are highly motivated, because they have an important mission to accomplish: "We try to make young people who have seen death in their faces and who are searching for life with all their strength live at least a few serene moments."
