Rotaractors get creative to help children in Ukraine

Rotaractor Sergiy Kotla is greeted with a warm hug on the day of the workshop. Photo by Taras Mytkalyk

In Ukraine, close to 100,000 children live in orphanages, which provide education and basic care but few opportunities to develop creativity.

Members of the Rotaract Club of Kyiv Multinational worked with children at an orphanage in Zgurivka, a village outside the capital, to make Ukrainian folk art. Together with the Rotaract clubs of Moscow-East, Russia; Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Baku, Azerbaijan; and El Tahrir, Egypt, the Kyiv Multinational club formed Creativity Without Borders, a project in which each club organized a hands-on creative project at an orphanage in its country.

In Zgurivka, local craftspeople taught the children to make traditional motanka dolls – colorful cloth figures that are seen as talismans and protectors of families.

The five Rotaract clubs exchanged the handicrafts (which also included candles, papyrus products, and embroidery) and auctioned them; the Kyiv Multinational Rotaractors used the funds they raised to buy woodworking and embroidery kits for the orphanage in Zgurivka.

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