In the summer of 2007, I joined a group of 30 Russian and English students to work on a month-long summer camp at a state orphanage for mentally and physically disabled children in the Pskov region, south of St Petersburg.
Every day, we walked up to the orphanage to put on developmental activities, sporting events, solve puzzles, play games, stage shows and go on camping trips.
I vividly remember the smells – cooked food, unwashed bodies, chlorine and urine – and how the children crowded you, grabbing hands and clothes, pinching, pulling hair, jostling and asking questions.
Dressed in an odd collection of what seemed to be adult castoffs, the kids spent most of their waking hours in rooms furnished with just a few scuffed tables and chairs, a bookcase and television.
I volunteered at the orphanage, in the village of Belskoye Ustye, for almost a decade, but it was the first visit that made the biggest impression.
