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Three of our staff team, Janette, Martin and Shaun, travelled to Moscow to present at “The 1st All Russian Conference with International Participation” at the new Uchimznaem hospital.
Shaun and Martin arrived in Moscow on the Friday before the conference for some sightseeing. They visited Red Square at night, just before it was closed in preparation for the upcoming “Unity Day” celebrations.
Then Janette joined them at their new hotel near the Uchimznaem children’s hospital.
The Uchimznaem children's hospital.
Our visit began with a quick tour of the well-equipped and purpose built hospital schoolrooms.
The conference opened with hospital doctors treating us to a classical music performance.
Sergey Sharikov, the project manager of the hospital, opened the conference.
Jan Haverkate, the president of HOPE, spoke about the work of HOPE.
As the majority of the conference members were Russian speakers each of us were assigned with a translator, a student of English at the university, which made a huge difference to us being able to participate in the conference.
As well as our Russian colleagues there were also attendees from Armenia, Greece, Netherlands and Romania.
In the afternoon there were a range of workshops to attend, including Janette’s “Educating the Emotions through the Arts”.
And Lego robotics workshops.
Technology is key to the work of the hospital school.
Shaun gave a workshop called “The Art of Participation – a means to engage, interact and inform”. The creating of a portrait of the queen was very well received!
The next day the deputy minister for education visited the conference.
Janette gave a presentation to the conference about the work of our hospital school.
And Martin presented the “Well at School” website and project.
A group photo with our new collegues.
Sergey, Natalia and Jan.
English teachers Pavel and Araksya.
More group photos.
Janette meets the radio presenter.
The important cloakroom attendants were really friendly!
A huge thank-you to our translators, volunteer students from the University, who all worked so hard translating for us!
On the final evening we visited Vorobyovy Gory and saw the purple trees at Sparrow Hills.
The facilities at the Uchimznaem hospital school are truly amazing – it just goes to show what you can do with the space and funding for a purpose built building and sponsorship from Samsung!
It was a wonderful experience to meet with, discuss and share our experiences with our new colleagues and we look forward to finding new ways of working together.