Home delivery care. How the youth of Mozyr region helps the elderly with household chores

This year, BRSM launched a large-scale republican youth volunteer marathon “Dobro.Bel”. This unique project is built in the format of monthly thematic tests and challenges covering a variety of areas of good deeds. The whole of October as part of the marathon is completely devoted to the attention to the older generation and takes place under the iconic aegis “Good to the Elders” and “Good Fair”. Today, October 17, the troops of the volunteers of the Mozyr district Committee of the BRSM went to the agro-town of Meleshkovichi to support a local resident – a lonely pensioner Ekaterina Konstantinovna Savitskaya. The sb.by correspondent joined the honorable and noble mission, which decided to personally participate in the process and shared with the children the front of work on the rural farmstead.

Ekaterina Konstantinovna welcomed the guests with excitement and sincere joy. Due to her age, it is becoming increasingly difficult to cope with household chores, so the visit was very useful. In the courtyard, the youth team, which included volunteers of the Good Heart movement - students of the Meleshkovich secondary school, students and working youth of the district, came with boxes and bags, delivering the hostess a whole vitamin arsenal: potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, fresh apples and sweets for tea. Barely seeing such an abundance of gifts and helpers themselves, the hostess splashes her hands:

- Thank you so much for bringing so many guests! If I knew that there would be so many of you, I would fry you potatoes! – Ekaterina Konstantinovna greets us with a smile.

After that, the work on the farm itself boiled. Volunteers helped dig up beds for the winter, tore out the remaining beets in the garden and carefully removed ripe winter apples from the trees. While the guys were wielding shovels in the beds, I put aside the recorder, along with the girls-volunteers armed with garden wheelbarrows and helped quickly collect and take to the humus pile of dry greens and weeds. They brought order to the house territory: they carefully leveled the holes, which managed to diligently dig up the beloved dog of the hostess.

Watching the guys dig up the garden together, the pensioner shares his plans:

- You can’t manage all this, those years have passed. I can't carry or walk far in my hands, I can't even carry a loaf of bread. But in the yard I always try to stomp, move - and the chicken should be fed, and the dog and the cat. Movement is life! I used to cultivate the garden myself, but now I can not dig up a single gram. Help for lonely people like me is very important. In a matter of hours, the guys did everything, the bed was prepared - now I will carefully plant garlic there and onions for the winter. And the beets were collected, and the winter apples were removed from the trees - now everything is ready for the cold.

When my colleague decided to capture this moment, the hostess noted the behavior of the four-legged pet with a smile:

- Even my dog Ron is lost! He walks around thinking, “What is this big delegation in my yard?”

The shaggy security guard really did not issue a single bark, being incredibly friendly - to match his hospitable hostess. The guys gladly stroked both Ron and the local cat Maryla, who curiously wandered around with volunteers, as if vigilantly controlling the quality of preparation of beds.

While young people bring gloss to the courtyard, for a soulful conversation we learn that Ekaterina Konstantinovna is a truly rich grandmother and great-grandmother. She has two children, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Yes, most of the large family now lives in Russia, but the distance for loving hearts is not an obstacle. Relatives do not forget the way to the parental home, and in December the pensioner with special trepidation is waiting to visit her daughter. And a reliable support here, in the Mozyr region, for her was a grandson Vadim. Despite the responsible and difficult service in the police, he tries to surround a loved one with maximum attention, regularly visits his grandmother and brings all the necessary products and things. Although due to the busy work schedule to break out in Meleshkovichi turns out not as often as he would like.

However, single Ekaterina Konstantinovna does not exactly consider herself, and her cheerfulness and inexhaustible optimism can only be envied. It seems as if she is engaged in fashionable Scandinavian walking and it was she who set the trend for this sports activity in her native agro-town. To my complimentary remark, the pensioner laughs enthusiastically: “Oh, you are good!” and reveals the secret of her excellent mood:

- I try to do exercises every day, although I am not very fond of it, because here I have my daily “charging” on the farmstead – there is always enough work. And so that the memory did not fail and the mind remained sharp, I came up with my own method: every day I lie down and count the multiplication table in my mind. I began to notice that I forget some moments, so I give the brain a load.

While the guys were working together with shovels, forming flat beds, I get acquainted with one of the volunteers. Kirill Ilyuk came to help on his legal day off. On weekdays, the young man works as an installer in the construction unitary enterprise "Polesye-Promzhilstroy", the founder of which is OJSC "Mozyr Refinery", so physical labor for him is a familiar thing.

- I have been in the youth movement for about eight years, I came here as a schoolboy, says Kirill Ilyuk. We receive applications, and we always promptly go to the addresses. For me, village work is familiar. Every summer, on vacation, my parents took me to my grandmother’s village of Remezy – this is in the neighboring Yelsky district, from Meleshkovichi another 25 kilometers. He has been accustomed to earth and order since childhood. I love physical work and I really want to support older people. Over the years, it becomes difficult for them to cope with the farmstead alone, and while there is strength and energy, you need to help.

Next to me, deftly putting dry grass in a wheelbarrow, Yana Savitskaya works - by an amazing coincidence, the same name of our hospitable hostess. The girl is studying at the 3rd year of the philological faculty of the Mozyr State Pedagogical University named after I. P. Shamyakin, where she masters the future profession of a teacher. She joined the volunteer movement and the Belarusian student detachments from the second half of the first year, becoming an integral part of the student pedagogical detachment "Batteryka".

- To help those who really need it is a real vocation, admits Yana Savitskaya. - It is easy to combine social affairs with studies, you can always devote time to useful initiatives after couples. For example, last winter, when a lot of snow piled up, my classmates and I organized a team and went to the local grandmothers - clearing the paths, carrying fuel to the furnaces. If you do not show your work and stay away, nothing in the world will change. You have to start with yourself. We regularly talk about our trips on social networks and do it in order to motivate peers. There's no such thing as kindness.

A large-scale relay of good unites hundreds of caring hearts throughout the Gomel region. To date, the volunteer movement “Good Heart” has united more than 7,600 young people, including schoolchildren, students of universities and colleges, working youth of the region.

- We visit veterans and single elderly people daily, a day comes out to two or three addresses, and yesterday was a record – volunteers went to 14 addresses at once, – says the first secretary of the Mozyr district Committee of the BRSM Veronika Pavlova. – If we take general statistics, then for a week we help more than 30 representatives of the older generation. And that's not counting the farm fairs, where our guys are on duty every weekend to help bring heavy bags of potatoes, carrots and onions to the car and home for free. At the same time, we work not only in Mozyr, where there are more volunteers, but also constantly go to remote villages. Someone needs to remove the territory from the fallen foliage, someone - to restore order on the farmstead, so all efforts were directed to help remove vegetables and prepare the land for beds.

Veronika Pavlova emphasizes that the republican project “Dobro.Bel” evokes a lively response among young people thanks to the fascinating format of monthly tasks, and the number of marathon participants is growing every day:

- Our volunteer movement “Good Heart” is aimed at direct and absolutely unselfish help to those who need it: lonely elderly people, children, animal shelters. New guys, whole classes and student groups are constantly joining our actions. And when you see this feedback, the burning eyes of volunteers and hear the usual human thank you, you get an incredible boost of energy. This is really inspiring to do even more good deeds, because such sincere emotions can not be bought for any money.

By lunch, a friendly team of volunteers completed the planned work. Another rural address became cleaner and cozy, and the dog Ron finally calmly took his post at the gate, faithfully guarding the order imposed by the guys. On the road, Ekaterina Konstantinovna warmly hugged everyone and generously treated our whole team with fresh homemade eggs from her chickens.

- I don’t even have words to express my gratitude! Thank you very much for not forgetting, this is very important for us, the old people, said the grandmother with a smile and waved her hand at goodbye. With care and respect: the youth of the Belynichsky district joined the action “Good to the elders”