Hunting for children

Foreign ‘educators’ revived again

Eastern wisdom ‘If you want to defeat your enemy, educate his children’ has long been firmly adopted by the West. Any country that falls into the sphere of its aggressive interests is subjected to massive processing by funds and programmes that carry the ‘light of enlightenment’. The attack begins with numerous NGOs, initiatives and foundations, and only then come the ‘colour revolutions’ or the rockets.

They weave their webs 

Someone tries to distort the history of the country as much as possible, someone talks about its complete backwardness compared to other countries, someone persistently advertises other people’s values, someone teaches us to hate our own and love the Western. Education and funding comes in a wide wave, and they have one goal — to raise a generation of traitors who will not defend their homeland, because they will no longer have the concept of homeland...
For almost three years in Belarus there has been talk that the upbringing of children should not be done by random people, especially those who are on a foreign salary. From time to time, we even hear that so many NGOs, private schools, kindergartens and other hotbeds of an ideology alien to us have been liquidated in a district, region, country. We fight, we discover, we stand guard.
Meanwhile, the majority of ‘educators’ have not disappeared anywhere, despite the numbers of closed and liquidated. 
However, foreign sponsors have not gone away, for whom Belarus has remained a country in which it did not work out the first time. But the West does not like defeats and does not forgive. This means that they work for us with redoubled efforts and funding.   
Moreover, they still continue to raise our children. But for now, they are doing it carefully, carefully re-building networks of courses, camps, training seminars, and events. It is still timid again, but just give it time — and all this will again sprout in a lush colour. The struggle for minds and ideological influence continues...

ipsyholog.ru

Attractive offers from the Internet 

“There is an enrolment in the ‘Children and Teen Business’ programme — a 10-day camp for Belarusian teenagers on the topics of business, marketing, finance and presentations. Teamwork with peers with the support of mentors. The presentation of your business projects will be held at the end! The best projects will be submitted to the competition and will have the opportunity to receive funding for implementation. Classes will be held in Warsaw and Vilnius, but the organisers promise to add other cities if the demand is high (for this, indicate the preferred city in the participation form). Unfortunately, due to the political situation in Belarus, camps are only possible in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. Young people aged 10-16 are invited to participate.”
“Hackathon of inspiring projects — offline in Warsaw! XXX invites Belarusians aged 12-21 who have ideas for activist, social, urban or media projects. At the Hackathon, you will learn how to turn ideas into high-profile activities and grow them into projects. You will also learn how to work with artificial intelligence and how to speak in public. Winning projects will receive mentoring and financial support” (style and spelling of the original are kept).
Such announcements have recently been pouring in packs on the heads of Internet users from Belarus. Only the names of events and inviting parties change, but the essence is the same for everyone: Belarusian youth is again in the focus of interests there, abroad. In the lists of mentors, coaches, teachers, the familiar names of those who fled Belarus after 2020 appear. However, the age of participants sometimes starts from 8 years.
Of course, not a single reasonable parent will send his 8-10-14-year-old child ‘to study the biodiversity of the Vilnius Region’ with strange people, and even to another country. Therefore, to get to know the parents, the organisers go online and meet in Belarus. How to contact them? Information will be provided upon request. Because they are still afraid. But not so much, since they arrange such meetings. Some initiatives invite abroad not only children, but also their parents. And, of course, all this is completely free, with the opening of free visas and other goodies...  
There are other options. On the Internet, where our children and teenagers are constantly located, they are offered to participate in something and win some kind of stuff.
For example, one overseas initiative invites teenagers to make their city a better place. You need to take a picture of some problem in your locality — a hole in the asphalt, a collapsed shop, whatever — and describe the situation. ‘Kind and unselfish’ uncles and aunts will simultaneously tell the participant how to become a ‘city activist’ and start solving problems. Because they are very worried about life in our country.
In the meantime, especially epic photographs sent by the participants illustrate materials about how bad everything is in Belarus. The most active and promising will receive a prize — a free trip to the summer camp of urban activism, all in the same Poland and Lithuania. 
Urban activism, as well as teenage business, and digital literacy, and many other things that our youth want to learn abroad, in principle, are not bad topics. Especially if the training is based on a real desire to give young people something new and important. But the problem is that in Poland and Lithuania, a good undertaking is given the necessary ideological basis, which in a couple of years can turn into certain political views that Warsaw and Vilnius need and are completely alien to Minsk. 

Camps that teach...

And what about in Belarus? Is there really no alternative and our children and youth can only learn something new or go on vacation abroad? Of course not. Wellness, suburban, city, tent, educational, creative, sports, school — it’s all about summer camps in Belarus. And there are literally hundreds of them. For every taste and budget. And also all sorts of courses, hobby groups, clubs, sports and military-patriotic schools that work all year round. Some are completely free.
Children and teenagers in our country are usually occupied with something useful and interesting. Children come to us even from other countries, especially in summer, and we don’t brainwash anyone with propaganda, we just welcome everyone with pleasure and make their vacation as memorable and cool as possible.  
But among all this useful variety, those who have not been in Belarus for a long time still feel great.
Literally in the middle of June there was a scandal in the Lida District. A children’s tent camp appeared on the banks of the Neman River, in which there were 55 children from 8 years old. The camp operated informally. The Christian Fellowship of Adults and Young People public association was the organiser of the camp.
The activities of the camp were suspended due to violation of sanitary standards and lack of approvals, the children were offered a rest in another camp.
The YMCA scouting organisation has been hiding behind the name Christian Fellowship of Adults and Young People for many years. An organisation with a very rich history and geography. For example, it is precisely such scout organisations in Ukraine that successfully educated the younger generation in the spirit of neo-Nazism. For what has been grown in Ukraine, we all have the misfortune to observe for more than one year and in the immediate vicinity of our borders.
YMCA is funded by foreign grants. Even if the organisers of the ‘fellowship’ carefully conceal this, it does not take much effort to establish the sources of the unification’s longevity in Belarus.
Or another religious mission, which also has no approvals for children’s summer camps in the Lida District — the Charitable Catholic Society ‘Caritas’ of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Belarus. But since there are no agreements, ‘Caritas’ cunningly decided to open summer recreation centres. They love children in this organisation and work with them.
By the way, in the same Ukraine, it was ‘Caritas’ that issued manuals for children, in which they told preschoolers and younger schoolchildren about why it is imperative to kill Russians. And they also talked about the superiority of Ukrainians over other Slavic peoples. 
Does anyone doubt that in Belarus, without ideology, these also do not work? Moreover, in August 2020, the ‘Caritas’ website spoke so confidently about the crisis of power in Belarus and supported the ‘victims of lawlessness’…

By Alena Krasovskaya