OperationSAFE

This blog post is a part of the I follow my heart project 

 “The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?” 

Proverb

Kids should be kids. They should play with their friends, have fun and living a good life with their family. A family that protects them, takes care of them and gives them love. But unfortunately not every kid is blessed with that. So many children lost their parents way too early and so they need others to help them. Like OperationSAFE, that is run by volunteers and short-term teams.

picture taken from the OperationSAFE-website

So many bad things happen every single day. You receive a bad message from your doctor, someone of your family suffers or someone you loved had died. It is hard for us to go through this, to understand why such a bad thing had happened to us. But imagine you would still be a child. Wouldn’t it be so much worse? Children understand such a disaster even less than an adult. Why did this happen to them? Why had their parents left them? Left them all alone? They keep asking themselves such questions and they will never forget what happened to them.

Maybe they also think they have done something wrong, and that’s the punishment. But of course that is not true. When an earthquake or another natural disaster caused the death of their parents and they have to live in an orphanage, they might not feel loved. These kids are loved but not by the ones they love: their own parents. They miss them, miss the safety they gave them. So when a kid gets affected by such a horrible disaster, they suffer much more than a grown-up, and so they need special help. OperationSAFE takes care of these children. They teach them the five important principles to emotional recovery and survival.

After such a disaster had happened and the kids know that they won’t see their parents again, they feel left alone. So the first thing for them is to realize that they are not. There are still people who love them and take care of them, because everyone is important. Life is a gift, and everyone is worth living his or her life. So they should make new friends and talk to them, it’s not about to give up but to look forward. Believe in yourself and follow your heart. Stay courageous and strong. You’ll realize that you are loved.

Stories, crafts, songs and games help these kids to regain hope. They make friends, communicate with each other, and try to forget. They won’t forget, but together they can get through it all a bit better and easier. OperationSAFE does a great job in my mind, that’s why I wanted to write about their work. I think it’s really impressive and a great thing. Children should be allowed to have a good childhood, they should not suffer, they should not have to go through such pain and think life is only about that. They should firstly see the beautiful sides of life. So when something so horrible happened to them, they need help of others to realize that they are not alone, that they are loved and life goes on. Everyone working for OperationSAFE shows us, that life really has very good, kind and generous sides, too.

For more on OperationSAFE go to http://opsafeintl.com/