From the founding day of our centre, the children have taken part in a great variety of clowning events. So what is “clowning”? The only association many people have is that of the circus, nothing more. However, it has already become a way of life for our pupils and teachers.

Patch Adams’ idea of medicine is that it should be free and available for everyone. His main goal is to help those who find themselves in a difficult situation.

Together with his troop of clowns he has roamed half the world and has visited a great many hospitals, shelters, orphanages, refugee camps and jails, as well as taking part in good will missions to such crisis areas as Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan, South Africa. And the clowns bring joy, laughter, smiles and hope wherever they go, making people believe that life can change for the better.

Soon it will be twenty years that Patch and his clowns have been making annual visits to Russia. They visit children in hospitals and orphanages, talking with each child individually, establishing a friendship with them and giving their lives a bit of warmth.

The head of our centre, Maria, has been friends with Patch for more than ten years now. From the very beginning, she immersed herself in clowning, gradually bringing the children of the centre in, too. Over the last few years we have made clowning a permanent feature. Now we bring children festivity much more than once a year, both in Moscow and other cities.

Unfortunately, our trips outside Moscow are limited to the funds of our centre. However, we are always glad and ready to arrange a festivity within the city. Our kids, one-time orphans as well, dress in clown costumes and go visiting hospitals, orphanages, families with children of the First Children’s Oncological Hospice as well as mentally and physically disabled children. We hope that the experience our pupils draw from such events will set them an example of how to treat such people, and raise their desire to help others.

The things we have learnt and are ready to teach you are told in our brochure “From I to We”

First Children’s Oncological Hospice

It’s been many years since our center established a friendship with the Oncological department of the Kashirka Centre. Already when Maria had gathered her first group of pupils, they would visit the Oncological Centre to paint with the young patients.

The result of that joint artistic effort became the creation of a picture called “Life Quenches Fear”.

To our great sorrow some of the children who painted the picture are no longer with us, but it continues to adorn one of the hospice’s walls, reminding us of them and the fact that life must win over illness.

We regularly visit the Kashirka Centre in the framework of our clowning events. And in 2001 the chief medical officer and head doctor of the Kashirka Centre, Evgyeniya Moisyeyenko, who also heads the First Children’s Oncological Hospice, first let us visit the families with children under the care of the hospice. These are terminally ill children, and the aim of the hospice is to provide them with everything necessary for them to spend the last months of their lives with their families rather than stay in hospital. We pay visits to such children and try to cheer them up and bring a little bit of help to them and their parents. Unfortunately, it’s beyond our effort to save them, but we try to fill each of their precious remaining moments of life with joy. For instance, once we even managed to bring a horse to the house of a girl who had dreamt for her entire life to see the animal.

For several years now we have been holding charity auctions of our pupils’ creative works and part of the funds raised go to help children ill with cancer. Fortunately this funding doesn’t involve the hospice alone, and often we manage to help those children who are in need of surgery but whose parents lack the necessary money for it.

Disabled Children

Many of the pupils in our centre belong to the group of children dubbed as “children with limited abilities”.

Such children have certain peculiarities in their physical and mental development which limit their ability to communicate, evolve and basically match their peers in everyday life.

Our work with such children started when the first group of children with infantile cerebral paralysis arrived in our centre. Now about one third of our pupils are children with various disabilities. These children work together with the rest of our pupils often coming up with real creative masterpieces. For the children of both groups it’s very important to communicate with each other, form correct social patterns of behavior based on mutual aid and respect of each other.

Apart from children with infantile cerebral paralysis we often receive kids with other physical and mental disabilities. Some of them live in specialized orphanages and others come to us with their parents. Art classes become a means to explore the world and express their personalities.

Besides working with mentally and physically disabled children we often arrange our clowning festivities as part of the events established by other organizations whose priorities are also working with child invalids.