From The Director, Elizabeth Tennison, March 21 2009
For those of you concerned about what information your host child may be getting about this summer's program, please review the following:

The school Directors we work with in Belarus are hopefully being contacted by the translators who have been notified about this summer's host program cancellation. It's not always a perfect or fast system given that we do not talk to the Directors ourselves. Many host parents are communicating with their host kids and are beginning to talk about this with them. As much as we spoke to everyone in Belarus last fall about the possibilities for this summer, it appears many there are in a state of denial. Responses from kids there seem to be, "we don't know anything" even though we were very specific. Most likely, it will be a slow process of disseminating the information and having them hear, believe and understand it.

Certainly, at this point, I think it's appropriate for host parents here to talk to their kids and let them know we can't host this summer because our governments have not reached an agreement on child return policies, but that we look forward to hosting again next year when those policies have been agreed on and put in place. Meanwhile, we will continue to send updates to Belarus about what's going on here as we know it. In addition, many of us will be sending supplies from here to our kids there. To continue our connection to Belarus, For the Children of the World plans on having one or more representatives travel there this summer to buy and distribute supplies to the 1st and 2nd graders of Lipova, Garocheche and Vezhni.

Elizabeth