KEYWORDS: Nash Dom, integration camp, camp counselor, Janusz Korczak.

ABSTRACT: This paper, written in an informal and personal manner, tells the reader about the results of an amazing integration camp which retains the characteristics of Janusz Korczak’s humanistic pedagogy and teaches kindness and justice to each camper and counselor.

Instead of introduction

When speaking about our camp, we use three characteristics to describe it:

• Nash Dom is a Korczak’s camp. It is based on the principles developed by Janusz Korczak: recognition of the self-value of childhood and the child’s rights including the right for freedom in an educational environment, a dialogue between an adult and children as the key of their relationships, forgiveness as the leading idea of successful pedagogical activity...
•  Nash Dom is an international camp. During all the years of its activity, our camp has trained over 300 new-type Korczak camp counselors from 9 countries. They are volunteers who take active part in the Korczak youth movement in their countries: Russia, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, USA, Brazil, Italy, Spain and Ukraine.
• Nash Dom is an integration camp. For less than a fourth of a century the camp has provided summer and winter vacations for over 2,000 children -- “home” kids from well-to-do families, young orphans, children with physical and mental challenges, little social outcasts, children at risk, of different age groups, from various cities of Russia and from different countries.

What has the camp taught us?

This year was the 24th Korczak’s camp. The analysis of the camp’s history (the camp is loved so much by its campers and counselors) brought us to a number of conclusions. First, the camp mission has become very clear through all these years. It is Korczak’s understanding of every child’s value, rights of all children, psychological and pedagogical principles of humanism in the camp’s educational environment. The camp’s concept has also been preserved: we keep our traditions, develop the system of celebrations, and make a wide use of Korczak’s forms and methods of pedagogical work with children.

24 years have passed... We are looking back and asking ourselves: what are we to expect in the future? Of course, we should find new forms of work because life changes rapidly, and modern children live in a more virtual space. We are increasingly facing the situation when our children are unable to build relationships in real life: they are unable to be friends, play, or fantasize. Informational space, which is engulfing us, is packed with ready-to-use prescriptions. Children are not given an opportunity to invent things -- they just copy and imitate.

Our methods of work with children are based on Korczak’s ideas. His pedagogy has equipped us with a holistic approach to the development of every child taking into consideration his/her physiological, psychological, and social characteristics. The inner life of Nash Dom is built on trust, love, and respect. We see the meaning of our work in learning how to accept and to recognize the child’s personality and individuality. We do not have the task to quickly correct all mistakes caused by parents due to various reasons. Our goal is to accept each child the way he or she is.

We pay serious attention to relationships between counselors and campers. From the first moments of children’s arrival at the railway station and until the last moments of their departure our counselors are constantly with the campers. Together they create a wonderful world and a unique space to gain experience, which changes all the participants for good. We believe that the main value in the relationships between counselors and campers is trust. It can be born in the dialogue when all decisions are first discussed and then made. We also find hugs and smiles to be an essential form of our interaction with children. By hugging a child we establish contact with him or her, and this leads to warm relationships. We try to teach kids to be responsible and understand their own behavior; we build our relationships on children’s initiative in creative activities, we encourage them with music, with our own example and our history; we teach them to analyze their actions and words, to be empathetic, independent, and able to make choices. The experience gained in the camp games enable our kids to later use it in real life situations. Of all traditions cherished during the twenty-four years of our camp life, the most valuable is the tradition to organize camp life not in the form of teams (as it is common in youth camps) but in families, just as it is natural for home living. A home is a play form, which makes it possible to compensate for something, which, due to different reasons, is missing in the lives of many children. In contrast, in our camp all kids have loving “parents” -- their counselors.

From the diary of V. Denisova, Camp Director, 2017

2016 helped us understand the intricacies of camp life organization. At the beginning of the term, counselors and campers who have been here before are leaders. After several days they have already established contact with the newcomers who quickly become part of the camp family and get adjusted to everything here. During the next phase every child finds his or her own role and place in the family and actively interacts with ‘family members’ in various creative activities. The final phase is characterized by the unity of all families and their integration in the big camp family. During this process it is important to monitor the dynamics of group development, identify leaders and build self-governance. Note, that with the increased difficulty of problems to solve by the children’s collective, there is also an increased tension. We find it to be a significant objective for counselors to monitor and reduce tension, channel the children’s energy into a “peaceful route”, and find reserves to increase efficiency of their educational efforts. In the 2016 summer camp, relationships in our families have become top priority. It may be explained by the fact that there were very many newcomers, and each of them introduced their own challenges and lives. We worked hard through the whole term to cope with a complicated knot of children’s problems. Some of them were successfully handled by means of traditional forms (night gatherings, family and all-camp candle parties, etc.). But we were constantly looking for new ways of work. Thus, this year, in addition to traditional awards for cleanness, children were also rewarded for doing something good for the whole camp. Such campers received the “Hero of the Day” badge to wear until the next day. At the end of the term twenty-one campers (just like the number of days of the camp term) were included into the core group of the most active camp members.

In search of new forms of working with counselors

We provide annual training for camp counselors. It is usually held in the form of a two-day learning and practical seminar. This year just for the first time we tried to organize the “Counselors’ School” project, which made it possible to discuss the goals and objectives, and challenges that our counselors face. The “Counselors’ School” program included a number of highly relevant topics such as “My Korczak”, “Counselor’s competence model”, “Authority and distance”, “Ethics of interaction with people with disabilities”, “Children’s emotions and feelings”, “Typology of games”, “Group dynamics”, “Family”, “Emotional memory”, and “Conflicts”.

The “Counselors’ School” helped us to build a well knit team of friends and like-minded people before the actual camp term started, and to provide our counselors with valid theoretical and practical knowledge, and increase their professional competence. As a result, we began the 2016 camp as a united team, the members of which got along very well. We avoided conflict situations in the our counselors’ team during all the twenty-one days, which enabled us to save time for organizational moments (planning meetings, etc.), and allocate more time for leisure and sport activities as an essential component of an emotional recharge.

We paid great attention to the counselors’ reflection upon their own educational activitшуы. The counselors were offered to fill in questionnaires that contained questions about complicated problems of their work with children. The answers we received may reveal the counselors’ genuine desire to think, search for ways to deal with children with which it is “easy so far” or “difficult so far”. This is how our experienced counselors, Pasha B. and Zhenya K., answered those questions:

“We believe that there are no children who are easy or difficult to deal with for a long time. Each child may behave differently in various situations, depending on his or her mood, exhaustion, people around, etc. Besides, much depends on the counselor, whose reaction is also determined by various factors. But we may tell much about our children:

• Fedya is calm, thoughtful, polite, open for interaction, but may suddenly lose his temper, start running or shouting.
• Yasha is a very active and joyful fidget, but may often be insolent and willing to fight.
• Kolya is a naughty child, a troublemaker and a bully who likes to run and play, reluctant to talk seriously preferring a chat about nothing. But when he remains alone with you, he is calm and turns into a sympathetic and well-behaved boy.
• Lev presents an enigma for us because we are often in a difficulty to find the motives of his behavior. However, at times he assumes responsibility and keeps his word.
• Our girls -- Polina, another Polina, and Tasya -- are very agreeable and obedient, love to sing and invent things, ready to make joint presentations, friendly, playful, cheerful -- in short, great girls!!!”

Some of the counselors’ essays impressed us with their deep emotional engagement. Here are, for example, notes from a very experienced and kind counselor Alina Sh.:

“For the whole day I’ve been thinking about forgiveness and how to forgive... I haven’t thought about anything of this kind for a long time -- things usually worked out without much thought. Indeed, all children tend to lose temper from time to time, and then things get better. In this camp (winter of 2016), I’ve met an unusual child. He is a little kid. And he has health problems. My new friend is unpredictable, and I cannot understand what attracts or repels him, discourages him or makes him happy. Today, I’ve tried to say the one and the same thing to him for 10 times. 10 times! No kidding. I kept telling him that he couldn’t talk to children (if he doesn’t like something in his interlocutor, the latter receives a punch in the face. The blows are cruel and painful.). By the evening I felt that my anger was going to hit the roof, and I was about to lose temper and explode. It is hard so far, but let us see what happens next...”

In the summer 2016 camp, we asked our counselors to reflect on what new about themselves, their children, and the counselor’s work they had learnt during the camp term. Here are some of their responses that are formulated as the continuation to the phrase: “This summer I have learnt that”:

- I’m not all-powerful. I understood that I should learn how to stop, and also that children need attention, and that the child’s agreeable personality does not mean that this child needs less care and love than other children. I have also learned that not every child is ready to accept help, and that the counselor is an older friend who in the camp plays a role of a parent to a child (Anya K.).

- Children make me open up from different angles which I even did not think I could have; each child plants in me a little seed of love, warmth, and smile, and later on these seeds sprout and I am changing; children may love us so much and so honestly that I feel apprehensive at the thought how we will be able to live without one another. This is the type of love that will remain with us forever; this is chemistry that always provokes an explosive reaction. I have learned that a counselor is not just a friend and an authority but also a true teacher. I see that my campers can learn a lot, and the most important thing that they can learn a lot of good and genuine (Mariyka K.).

- I am quite good at using various ways of dealing with children; I may relieve stress; we should not judge without looking into the problem carefully. Children are not always to blame for what they do, and they may help us and suggest the right way out. Counselors are human beings, strong people, but they all may have their weaknesses. A good counselor is a workaholic. In my everyday life I am different (Denis M.).

- I may cope with many things; I am more careful and helpful than I thought I was; children offer us much love; the counselor is a friend, a mentor, and a parent (Katherine S.);

- I am doing my part of the work (of course, I knew that before); children have two, three, four or more natural faces: and each reveals itself at a certain point, and we may be puzzled with these displays. The same children seem different to different people; a counselor may sacrifice oneself to the children only to hear them say that all counselors are selfish, and come to the camp to enjoy themselves (Andrei A.).

- I am able to do much in terms of working with children; I should not be afraid to make a mistake or to ask for help if necessary; I have matured. Children may reveal aggression not because they don’t like something but because there may be something wrong in their lives, and it is important to understand it. To be a counselor is a calling which requires maximum of physical and moral commitment; to be a counselor is both hard and noble because we are able to help every child to grow and become a socially healthy individual (Masha S.).

- I love children much more than I used to think; children are clever, shrewd, and interesting (all in the superlative degree). Each of them has a unique life story -- pure and honest; a counselor is first and foremost a role model to oneself, and only then to children, a mentor to oneself, and only then to others. A counselor means patience, wisdom, acceptance, endless explanations, respect, and love (Alissa).

- I am able to do a lot; I did not know myself enough before I got this experience, and there is still a lot to work on. Children may be different -- children in Moscow are different from their Kazan peers. The counselor is a superman who does not need any sleep, food, or air but is able to do everything (Ruslan M.).

- I can have a certain influence on others; children may reveal themselves as different personalities in the same space and time; the counselor is a children’s friend (Dasha B.).

- I may survive without sleep for twenty-one days in a row for the sake of the common good. I love singing, and I’m not shy to do it if there are like-minded people around me. Children may be absolutely brilliant, responsible, kind, and open; the counselor is a super active octopus, an ideas’ generator and a very patient human being (Anna S.).

- I am a rather interesting man, and I have something to share. Children may be very interesting and gifted, and they may reveal themselves gradually, which has surprised me more than once. The counselor is no less of a disciplinarian but more of a teacher, guide, and guru who is able to lead others and to demonstrate to the children both -- a better life and the way to make themselves better (Aleksey M.).

- I am responsible for my own life and, if I am sure in myself, everything turns out to be great. But if I am not sure or hesitate, I make mistakes, I fail myself, or things become difficult. Children are the same human beings as adults. Didn’t I know this before? I did. But now I have understood this feeling in a different way. I’ve learned to take it easier when facing negative situations with children, and I have understood that I just needed to do something (earlier, such situations depressed me, and I felt hopeless). Nash Dom counselors are miracle workers, capable to organize wonderful children’s collectives. In our camp we come to understanding that it is natural to speak in a calm voice, help a child, feel compassion and think about the child more than about ourselves -- however, it is a hard moral labor to be like this. I feel grateful and respectful of all counselors of Nash Dom-2016 (Marina U.).

We all want our children to think. We stimulate thinking: ask questions and offer topics for essays. Many questions are related to Korczak.

We asked 6-8-year-old children (first family): “When hearing Korczak’s name, what are you thinking of? What memories does it bring up in you? What are you dreaming of?”

• I want Korczak to come back (Lyova, 6 years old).
• If I were a magician, I would bring Korczak back (Sasha, 6 years old).
• I’m thinking about war, and I have a dream to stop wars forever (Kolya, 8 years old).
• I am thinking about a sad man (Fedya, 7 years old).
• I remember that he created an orphanage. Those were hard times for children, and Janusz Korczak took care of them (Misha, 7 years old).
• I wish Korczak could be with us during our big celebrations. I remember that he never scolded anybody or raised his voice (Fedya, 8 years old).

We asked our children, “Janusz Korczak was killed in 1942 (74 years ago). Why do we still remember him?” Here is how children responded:

• Because he was kind and good, and he could find a common language with children (Egor R.).
• Because he was special: Janusz Korczak sacrificed his life for the sake of children; he valued children more than his own life, and he stayed with them in the gas chambers until death” (Mikhail K., Valeria M.).
• Because he was an outstanding pedagogue, and our camp carries his name. He had his own way to educate children (Arseniy M.).
• Because he took care of children, he was an amazing writer and doctor, and did many wonderful things (Katya S.).
• Because he wrote many wonderful books for children (King Matt the First), and also many books where he explained how to help, love, and understand children (Artyom P.).
• Janusz Korczak was a children’s friend, writer and doctor; he was offered to avoid death in a concentration camp, but he declined it and stayed with his children and was executed. He took care of children and devoted his life to them (Evdokia, G.).
• Because Janusz Korczak was a famous doctor, known as an educator, devoted to children, and died together with them. He was offered to leave but he remained loyal to children” (Maria, P.).
• Because Janusz Korczak was very kind, he set up orphanages and stayed with his kids until theie end (Lyubov B.).
• In his life, Korczak performed many good deeds, which we should remember (Alexander L.).

Nash Dom International Integration Korczak Camp: Looking back

When doing something for many years, and several generations of children and counselors have changed, there is sometimes a wish to stop the moment, look back, and reflect on what has indeed happened to all of us during these years. These questions were answered by the first generation of counselors when interviewed in the film prepared for the 20th anniversary of the camp.

Here are the answers from the first Nash Dom camp (Taganrog, 1993) cunselor, Sergey Eyramdzhants, whois now a well-respected businessman and a father of four children:

The idea to organize the camp was born in the discussion of various suggestions, and the name of Janusz Korczak was mentioned for the first time. What if we could get children involved in something interesting and necessary for both children and adults, who are completely different -- different countries, cities, professions, interests, etc. We began to bring together people who were united by these ideas. When it all started, there came an idea of integration that was important to me -- the idea of getting children and later adults with disabilities to live together under one roof so that they could enrich one another. That was very appealing to me.

The second idea, which, I believe, will live long, is the idea to reproduce Korczak’s experiences many years after he had done it. And it worked -- all his ideas are still alive in the countries where there are public organizations that study Korczak’s legacy and promote his humanistic pedagogy. His concepts are implemented in many schools, kindergartens, and camps... With the formation of our camp it was exciting to watch how children were changing and, what seemed most interesting and important to me, was that we, counselors, were also changing and growing together with the children -- we were getting mature. But for that, many of us would have been different people.

Finally, there is another significant moment: it is important that the camp organizers should find it interesting to be together. There should be a need for it! I believe that if people, who do this together, irrespective of what happened in history, who created this, why it was created; if right now they have a mutual understanding, a desire to be together for the sake of these values, if they are united by the goal to do something together, it will be wonderful. This should be sufficient for their plans to be realized. We created that camp then and, if it is still alive that it means somebody needs it, similar to the need for the stars that are lit in the sky.

The 2016 camp contributed new materials to our archive, which, over these 24 years, has built up hundreds of answers to our questionnaires offered by our children and counselors, and thousands of letters from many parts of Russia and abroad, many presentations, films, and publications.

To conclude this paper, we call on our readers. Please wish us not to lose Korczak’s longing for better life which has not come yet but will come some day!