"I can" creative workshop

Our goal is to equip a creative – rehabilitation workshop for young people with disabilities living at Znamyanka orphanage. We want to establish a place where they could create with pleasure, to blossom and to earn money at the same time. In the workshop, young people with disabilities will have the opportunity to sew eco-bags for shopping, decorative pillows, T-shirts and accessories with author's prints, make jewelry and handmade stuff. We will teach them not only to produce a high-quality product but also to sell it online. For this reason, we are preparing for them motivational training and a training course on financial and computer literacy.

Our goal is to equip a creative – rehabilitation workshop for young people with disabilities living at Znamyanka orphanage. We want to establish a place where they could create with pleasure, to blossom and to earn money at the same time. In the workshop, young people with disabilities will have the opportunity to sew eco-bags for shopping, decorative pillows, T-shirts and accessories with author's prints, make jewelry and handmade stuff. We will teach them not only to produce a high-quality product but also to sell it online. For this reason, we are preparing for them motivational training and a training course on financial and computer literacy.

Currently, there are about 120 kids at the orphanage. Half of them are teenagers and young people 18+ with complex physical and intellectual disabilities. Despite invalidity, they are all sincere and talented youth who sing, paint, sew, make items with beads.
For over last 10 years we have been creating conditions for the development and rehabilitation of children at this orphanage. Every child has the potential despite disability. We have equipped the Center for Practical Life, where children with disabilities learn to cook, wash and iron clothes, go shopping, post office, and bank. We have created a sewing and art studio, where they could create masterpieces and give them to volunteers.

Teens have the opportunity to use PCs and conduct their pages in social networks. They learn to count money, make choice and have their own desires. For example, Svetlana K. would like to procure headphones, Sergei V. needs a pair of pants of a certain color and style, and Katya R. simply wants to go to the cafe and order a pizza. And they want to do it at their own cost by earning their own money.

Now we want to teach them to earn to content their own needs. For this reason, we need to equip workshops with printers for printing on fabrics, consumables (fabric, paint, shirts), a camera and we have to conduct some training on how to create an online page in the FB, to fill it with products. The Workshop will be working under the supervision of a mentor, who will help young people with all these issues.