“I want to share my pain with somebody...”

“I am one of the daughters whose parents want to build a radiant future for their child and go to work abroad for this,” writes Oksana Mishchuk, 17, from Khmelnytsky oblast, whose parents have been staying in Italy for eight years now. This is a quotation from a story in the collection Migrants’ Children on Themselves recently published by the International Institute of Education, Culture and Links with the Diaspora (MIOK) with support from a Ukrainian charitable foundation. The publication comprises 26 stories of the children whose parents have gone abroad. The competition, held by MIOK in the autumn, included a total 150 works. Most of the authors are children aged about 10 from Western Ukraine as well as those from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria and Russia, who describe their feelings while living apart from their parents or homeland.

“I sent a story for the competition not to receive an award but to share my pain with somebody,” says Oksana Mishchuk, one of the contest winners. “My story is not an exception. My granny is taking care of me. My mum and dad are working to earn money for my education. This is how they explained the goal of seeking a job abroad. At first I did not believe that I would be separated from my parents for years, not months, but then I had nothing to do but resign myself to this and learn to live on my own. Now they come here for a vacation once a year, just foe a month.”

But you can understand how the child’s soul aches from being separated from their parents only when you read at least a few pages of this book. The competition organizers did not even expect so many children to take up the call.

“Launching our project, we wanted to draw the attention of society to the little-discussed problems of migrants’ children. There are several reasons for this. One of them is absence of information about the number of labor migrants and of the children whom their parents leave in Ukraine. It seemed at first that we would receive just 10 to 20 letters, but we got as many as 156 works, including short stories, essays, poems, and even fragments of diaries,” MIOK director Iryna Kliuchkovska says. “All the letters struck us with sincerity and pain which you can feel in every word. So it was not easy to choose the winners. We have already launched the publication in Lviv and Kyiv and are going to show it in Eastern and Southern Ukraine after New Year’s Day.

Besides, MIOK has also held a migration-related art poster competition, titled “A Generous Ukrainian Heart to Ukraine and the World!” among students. One of these posters was reproduced on the publication’s cover: the face of a sad-eyed child who is looking out the window.

To help such children, Kliuchkovska suggests setting up special centers in every region, where children could receive advice from social workers and psychologists. On the other hand, the Ministry for Children and the Family insists that labor migrants’ children be granted the status of orphan, which will allow them to have an official guardian and receive financial assistance from the state. But adults should understand that what children need first of all is parents, not money.