GoCamp: Yaroslav Azhniuk

Hello! My name is Yaroslav Azhniuk and I would like to help students of a village school to go to the English summer camp – GoCamp. The GoCamp volunteers teach not only the foreign language, but also a lot of useful skills which are not covered by a typical curriculum, but are so necessary in real life! Presentation skills, the ability to work in a team and think creatively, let alone three weeks spent with a foreign volunteer can change the life of these children forever.

Hello! My name is Yaroslav Azhniuk and I would like to help students of a village school to go to the English summer camp – GoCamp. The GoCamp volunteers teach not only the foreign language, but also a lot of useful skills which are not covered by a typical curriculum, but are so necessary in real life! Presentation skills, the ability to work in a team and think creatively, let alone three weeks spent with a foreign volunteer can change the life of these children forever.

Today, English is lingua franca, a common language of the world. People who don’t speak it are like those who could not read or write a hundred years ago. Such people are still living among us, but there are fewer and fewer of them. I cannot overestimate the importance of languages in my life. As they say, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Mastery of English helped me to get a technical education, as I could use the most authoritative sources in the world online. Later I worked with English-speaking clients in my first business and established an international company with the headquarters in California and offices in Ukraine and China.
Those children who are now studying at schools will have to fight the global warming in the future, build settlements on Mars, re-invent education, and face the challenges we cannot even imagine. The better they will be equipped for these challenges, the better for everyone.
Only this year GoCamp is going to organize educational camps for 60,000 children. The project engages more than 600 volunteers from all over the world. For most of the children this will be their first meeting with a foreigner; many of them will for the first time meet someone from another town. I admire the team which organizes the largest network of summer camps in Ukraine for the second year running, as well as the professional level of organization.
Think about it – only 200 UAH or $7.69: this is the cost of participation of one child in the project. Participation of a school needs UAH 28,000 – slightly more than $1,000. It is an extremely rational use of money. I am sure that we will easily fundraise this sum!
The GoCamp project is a school language camps involving international volunteers, who, together with English teachers, help children to learn foreign languages.
GoGamp is about opportunities which are opening for Ukrainian children (only this year 60 000 children), namely learning about cultures of various countries, developing skills, which cannot be taught at school – critical or global thinking, for instance. For many pupils it will be their first meeting with a foreigner in their lives. In 2017, 600 volunteers are going to visit Ukraine, 80% of whom will go to small villages.
Volunteers will live in a host family of one of the pupils, which gives a special value to the project and opens the Ukrainian culture for foreigners in depth. As a result, foreigners ruin prejudice towards Ukraine, open it again and become the Ambassadors of our country in the world.
Project results in 2016:
● 120 volunteers from 40 countries;
● 127 schools GoCamps from 24 regions of Ukraine;
● 9000 children