Page 52 - Book about Friendship and Future.Stories of Volunteers.

Anna Sokolova

KFC Grabtsevo
Kaluga

A Volunteer Is Like a Magician to Some Extent

There is always some space for a miracle in our life. In my life
I also found it and I got an opportunity to work as a magician.
I think magicians are the people who have been practicing vol-
unteering and doing something good.
Three years ago, I joined the team of KFC corporate volun-
teers. It happened spontaneously. The guys asked me to help
in delivering an event in an orphanage, and I was not busy then.
After the first visit there came a second one, and then one more,
and then the visits became regular. We made friends with the
orphanage students. And before I knew it, I became a volunteers’
leader.
At some point I have understood that I want and can give
more. And I have finished a special training course in the school
of social volunteering and mentorship.
For more than a year I have been the mentor for two nice kids
from the Azarovsky orphanage. I have become their friend and
an adult advisor. We spend a lot of time together: we walk, play,
go on vacation together, celebrate holidays and make plans for
future. I see that the mentorship gives a lot to the kids – they
become more open and confident in themselves, because they
feel they are interesting and needed by someone else. Of course,
there is no magic in that, but when you see the changes come
true while you are watching, you feel that something marvelous
is happening…
Our contact has become an excellent positive example to oth-
er students of the orphanage, and now many of them have got
their own mentors and friends.