Sam_Movsisyan@yahoo.com
Information, even on hard problems, is usually given through statistics; i.e. several individuals help some groups in need...
But all this is individual to me.
When I was in my second year, we got together in a small group and decided to visit an orphanage, bringing them sweets as well as presents within our means and possibilities. The children were inspired so much that they arranged a show for the occasion without having to get ready or prepare for it... One should see how the little children acted, doing their best to pronounce words, how very excited the elder ones were... How much they wanted to communicate with us... But most importantly, the reason for their elation was not simply the presents and candies brought by us. They needed communication with youth, but those who were at the age of their elder sisters or brothers (the greater part of their nursemaids are older than their parents). The children were just seeking warm and simple conversation; they wanted to share their thoughts, dreams, and secrets.
Unfortunately, my words are powerless and pointless when it comes to expressing the magic and pain felt during the moment during which a child, knowing me merely for an hour, told me while parting, “Brother, take me to your place!”
Even the best orphanage will not able to provide these children with the necessary familial warmth, parental love, and care that they desperately need. Neither will we. And when I heard of other little children who, in turn, yearn to become workers or artisans, or to become the head of the orphanage, I realized that our presents were useless and even somewhat disastrous.
In the most important stage of their maturation and individuality, we as a society make them form a beggarly way of thinking. They have to count on alms; some don’t have even the simplest and most practical educational necessities such as knowledge of their surroundings (there are children who haven’t even gone out the gates of the orphanage). Alternatively, they get only the standard school education (can you imagine children who have never read a single book?).
It’s not even worth discussing the right values when a child hasn’t seen unselfish kindness and care. A future soldier doesn’t know about patriotism and a future mother has not the slightest idea of motherhood. What can be said about the possibilities of their future achievements when a child dreaming to become an artist is at best bound to enter a technical school or to become a shoemaker?
I am sure that the majority of readers have families. A smaller number but yet a considerable portion have been either encouraged or at least been given the opportunity to enter a higher educational institution, while on the other hand there are children whose mothers have straightforwardly vacated their responsibilities as mothers and thrown them to the wind. These young men and women are not given the chance to get to even elementary levels of self-consciousness. They simply mature with age but as adults they are not readily developed. So they just get a small apartment as a gift and stay all alone by themselves becoming either beggars, criminals, or inferior workers who are hardly able to earn their living; sometimes they are even bound to starve.
But they are inherently not criminals in order to be punished as such. They are our younger sisters and brothers who are not given the chance to lead the perfect life like us.
And we can help them. They do not need high flown words, neither great financial means. It’s enough to share an hour a week with them instead of our dedicating the same time to means that provide us with valueless personal entertainment. This should be done in order to improve their educational level and give them personal warmth as well as provide them with comforting words of advice.
Is it impossible for us?
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