When you see someone from a distance who is different from you, you make a lot of incorrect assumptions. What is important is our own personal sensitivity. Sometimes you need to stop and slow down to perceive small signals – the feelings of the people who don`t express themselves in the usual way. Sometimes we lack this sensitivity. It might seem that the person doesn't express themselves, so therefore they don`t feel anything, although it would be more correct to say to yourself, “I don`t understand their signals, so I don`t understand them”.

Personally, I think that it is enough to have an interest in the personality of the individual, openness towards those who are different from you, absolute respect for the individual. Not because of their achievements, or skills and abilities, not because of their talent and beauty, but just because they are human.

The best volunteers we have had were those who in the beginning were fainting and bursting into tears. Yes, sensitive people who both care a lot and are afraid a lot. But if the person stays after that, they very quickly stop seeing the disabilities of the person. All the disabilities become like a frame for a painting – if you like the painting, you won`t even remember what the frame looked like.

Feelings of hopelessness appear when you set a goal for yourself that cannot be achieved. We cannot make the disabled become ordinary people and completely free them from suffering, and it is important to realize that.

In general, any fear that appears during communication with disabled people is natural. You don`t need to fight these feelings. It is a question of contact duration. Fear is the first reaction, after it comes the second, the third. Provided that you stay, and don't run away.

You can start to communicate with some of them. You can just spend time together, play, invite them to visit you or go somewhere together. The most important thing is that it should be interesting for both of you. For some, it is enough to go for a walk, or to the shops, for others – to the Hermitage. You shouldn’t think, “What will they be able to understand there?” The feeling of excitement from seeing beauty comes naturally, and not through some special cultural and intellectual channels. All people have these abilities and these people are not an exception.

If personal contact is not possible for various reasons, there are different options for financial help: you can support the work of some of the volunteers or employees of the organization, buy orthopedic shoes or a wheelchair that is suitable for a certain person instead of just anybody – which would help to lessen the pain from spinal curvature. Also, we have a big project that needs financial support – a house for assisted living, where these people will be learning to live independently. For now, we have rented a house in the village of Razdolye, as an alternative to the big psycho-neurological asylums, and started to build our own house. We need help to continue this building work.

Generally, we consider it a social norm that a grown-up person leaves their parent’s home. And in this particular situation, it is better for a grown-up person to be among the people of their age or in the family they have created themselves. There are people for whom it is possible to start a family and have children, and those who, for different reasons, cannot.

But not all communities are equally good. I would say that they do not live in the community here in the psycho-neurological asylum, but in some crowd, where they don`t decide anything for themselves. Usually, we choose our own friends and people we want to be around. But they don`t. In the asylum, they live in one room with six other people who they didn't chose, in conditions where they have no personal space – they can`t ever be on their own, not even in the toilet. Those who have the experience of living in the communal flat, can perfectly understand how it is to live in a community you didn't choose.

Normal conditions are when we can choose who to be around, whether to be in the company of people or on our own. At the moment, people living in the asylum don`t have these options.

As an alternative to huge psycho-neurological asylums, we have opened the House of Assisted Living in the village of Razdolye.

The normal alternative to the asylum is a group of people who like living together as a kind of family or community. There are a maximum of eight people. They should be able to choose for themselves where to put things, what to hang on the wall, what to wear, what to cook, when to be on their own, where to go and with whom, what to do, to go to work on their own and come back home in the evening.

Here people are included in the everyday household processes and they live around regular people, in a regular home. They communicate with local people, go to the banya, to the shop, use public transport. The most important thing is that it is an open system. They also choose who they are going to live with by agreeing with the other people in the community. Moreover, they work in the churches. We hope that soon we will have workshops outside the house too. This is what normal grown-up life is. More or less normal. Of course, some would prefer to live on their own or just the two of them together, but for most of the people, who are under our care, it is impossible as they need 24 hour assistance.

We invited people to Razdolye who would like to try it. First, we had 15 people, we thought would live there for 2 months and then decide if they want to stay. As a result, one completely refused to leave the asylum. Some stayed for 2 weeks and came back to the asylum. It is quite difficult to live by yourself as there are a lot of things that you need to do. There were also people who were not ready to part with the friends they had in the asylum. For some, the fact that there was no TV was critical. Not everyone is ready to make the serious effort to be free, to have human dignity and choice. People are different. Out of 15 people, only 7 have stayed, the others chose to go back to the asylum.

There are a lot of examples. For example, one of the guys was constantly thinking about suicide. Now he is involved in a lot of artistic activities. He has decided for himself that life is worth living.

There is also a girl that can only express herself by the means of signing “yes” or “no”, she is really restricted in her movements, and is in a wheelchair. When she first appeared in the nursing home, she wasn't doing anything, but just sitting there. Now she is painting, has a better sense of direction, you can talk to her about different things only by getting the signals “yes” or “no” from her in an answer to the questions. Her answers are very meaningful, and she has a lot of interests and reactions.

For another girl, it was a very important step to learn to use the toilet. Before, it was only possible to carry her from the bed to the wheelchair and back. She had to use urinal right in the room. To teach her this took a lot of effort: both from her side and from the specialists in adaptive physical training. It took a year of work. Now she can use the wheelchair to go to the toilet and use it without any help.

Skills such as expressing yourself and being understood, being independent in daily needs are changing the quality of life and makes life happier. It’s worth the time and all the efforts of the specialists and the patients themselves.

Yes, they do. It is often based on personal relationships. It doesn’t always happen in ways such as “the strong helps the weak”, but rather people with complimentary disabilities form symbiotic pairs. For instance, it was very touching, when we had a boy who was very clever (almost as a regular person), but really restricted in movements, and another boy, whose movements were good, but he was restricted in mental abilities, they were doing huge puzzles together. The guy with the good mental ability could only point to the right place with his eyes, while the other boy acted as his hands. They were really enjoying creating these pictures together.

When we come to Europe, wherever we go we see people in wheelchairs, some of whom have mental disabilities. The fact that they are an equal part of society is something obvious for a European person. They are mostly shocked with how these people are treated here. For the Russian volunteers, the big discovery in general is a person like this and the fact that they have the same needs as we do. It is all due to the differences in experience that people have. Russian volunteers have more empathy and care - the same as towards a child, while for the European person these people are equals - they treat them with great ease. In European society in general, there is more acceptance of the difference in people and more respect towards a person’s individuality and diversity than we have here. European people started to understand much earlier that if a person takes responsibility for their life, they themselves determine a lot in their life. And this is what forms self-respect and respect for others.

It would be more correct to put the question this way – “Do these people want to live?”. During all my years of working with these people, what has always amazed me is that they want to live more than any other person I know. It all depends on the ability to appreciate things, the ability to take an interest in something, to have an emotional reaction to the positive things. In the asylum, there are an enormous amount of things like this. I believe that their life consists not only of suffering. It is interesting for them to live. Their life is full of emotional experiences, warmth, gratitude, but suffering as well, but then we all suffer. All this convinces me that we must continue doing what we are doing.