Building a bridge of love and respect

Dermot Brannick worked with some of Russia's million homeless children - now he's so attached to them, he's raising money to bring them on a summer holiday to Ireland, he tells Anne Dempsey

Since Dermot Brannick (24) left school he's been taking jobs at home to pay for his trips abroad. "I think you can learn best if you are taken away from the situation you know."

In Japan last year, he felt drawn to explore Siberia, came home to Rathfarnham to prepare, raised a bank loan, and trawled the Internet for Russian charitable organisations where he might offer his services. He found the website of Loves Bridge, a charity working with homeless children in Perm, 1,000 miles south of Moscow and, armed with a few contacts, set off.

"I arrived at the beginning of spring, still so freezing it would hurt your face. First impressions were of a grey city. It was only when the concrete began to melt under my feet, I realised it was frozen, compacted snow." He got a taxi to Loves Bridge, and walked into a home for 20 children, a nearby drop-in day-care centre visited by dozens more every week, and an outreach service. Hardly cutting edge by Irish standards, the facility is unique in Russia.

"There are an estimated one million homeless children in Russia. Some are abandoned, or have run away from parents who beat or neglect them, others are orphans. They are hated, regarded as the scum of the earth, sub human. In fact, many live underground in winter in the city's heating system. The authorities put them into orphanages with a very strict punishing regime, so not surprisingly, some kids run away.

"The official response is you do it their way, and if that doesn't work, you don't blame the system, you blame the kids, and decide they are hopeless.

"Loves Bridge is very different. They listen to children . . . treat them with love and respect, even when tested again and again."

The organisation was started in 1996 by an American woman, Christina Greenberg - then only in her teens - her brother and her husband-to-be.

Getting to know Lena, Vanya, Masha, Kostya and the other children was for Dermot a slow process. "The kids are used to people coming and not staying so after an initial friendliness they ignored me. I was like someone not let in by the gang. So everywhere they went, I tagged along with them, and gradually they realised I meant it, and we became friends.

"Vanya is one of the success stories. He's 17 and was a violent gang leader. Now he has a job, works as a volunteer in the day-care centre and is one of the friendliest people around. Lena is like many of the girls, playful, affectionate at one level, would buy and sell you at another. Someone remarked at a nine-year-old smoking in one of the photographs. That's the least of their problems. These children would have been drinking, smoking and glue sniffing at an early age, some of them would have been into prostitution.

"They are absolutely wonderful kids. They are strong, resourceful, they look after each other. " While most of the children are literate, he says, training and integration can be slow and difficult.

"Their concentration span is limited, they live for the moment . . . In some ways, all they have is the past, which they want to forget, and their dreams, which they feel they can never realise."

It was to make an impossible dream come true that Dermot left Russia to set up Perm, the Russian Child's Holiday Project which this summer will bring the 20 children on a week's adventure holiday to Avoca, Co Wicklow. The cost of the trip is €28,000. Over €15,000 has been raised, another corporate €10,000 had been promised leaving them almost home and dry, but this has now fallen through.

'WE need €12,000 urgently," says Dermot. "We will get the kids over by hook or by crook. We will not let them down at this stage. But we do need help and our deadline is May 2nd.

"People ask me why I want to bring homeless Russian children on a holiday to Ireland rather than something more practical . . . But we want to open up their minds and hearts to their potential. Taking the poorest of the poor on a trip to Ireland is demonstrating that to them, showing them how much they are worth and how important they are."

• Donations to Perm, the Russian children's holiday project, can be lodged to the Bank of Ireland A/c no 31510679, sort code 900201, or direct to Perm at 5 Fairways, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14. Telephone 01-4951479 e-mail dbrannic1@yahoo.com: website www.permkids.org