Experience changes lives
Spreading anti-violence message life-altering experience

By LOIS LEGGE Features Writer
The Chronicle Herald

YOUNG PEOPLE involved in LOVE will soon be spreading the love to dying children in Poland.

Five members from the Halifax youth violence prevention program will head to the European country Nov. 17 as part of another non-profit group’s efforts to help kids in need.

Coalition for Kids International is the brainchild of Garry Oliver and his partner, Kamila Rybicka. Teenage Canadian participants, who must raise their own money to travel, grant what Oliver describes as the often "pretty humbling" wishes of dying children in Eastern Europe. And, he adds, the Canadian gift givers often gain much more in return.

The wish recipients often come from poor families living in poor communities, he says. So requests for items like IPods or cellphones are common. On one October trip, a 12-year-old boy asked for a bed; another child just wanted to meet the Canadians and take them to his school.

"Most of the last wishes in Europe are things that our kids basically get for a birthday, Christmas present, and so it really teaches our teens here how fortunate they are, how lucky they are not only that they’re fit and well but lucky enough to live in a great place like Canada . . . and they come back realizing that they won’t take things for granted anymore," Oliver says.

"The terminally ill kids can give so much to the healthy teens here," he adds. "The terminally ill kids get their wishes and they get fulfilled for a moment, and their parents see their kids happy, but for our teens here . . . the changes last forever."

Oliver and Rybicka have seen those changes over and over, granting nearly 800 wishes since forming the group in 2004. The idea came after Rybicka, a business owner in Poland, received letters from two dying children asking her to sponsor their last wishes. She did, and the idea took off.

Oliver sees the coalition’s work as an "ideal" extension of LOVE, a non-profit program helping youth who’ve been the victims, perpetrators or witnesses of violence. Many of the LOVE members eventually share their stories and their anti-violence message with everyone from students to professionals working with youth.

"You’ve got the wonderful work they’re doing and then we can put these kids into a situation where they can really do some great work and see different cultures and have a new experience and just become even more enriched," Oliver says.

"I think they will be even more compassionate," he says, adding the trips involve a lot of travelling and are often emotionally draining — much harder than simply cutting a check to charity. So they then deserve to be respected, and I think they will feel very proud of themselves and be able to hold their heads up high."

LOVE’s executive director Sarah MacLaren has high hopes as well. "Our kids, by the time they’re leaders, are helping in their local community, and to me, this is just sort of a beautiful expansion of that," she says.

"Obviously, just the travel element alone (is a great experience), and there is something to seeing young people in challenging situations in a completely different culture that is quite simply life-altering and will bring them back with even more philanthropic spirit than I think they already have."