After nine months of planning and fund-raising events that included a somersault-a-thon, a group of eight British teenagers marched into Moscow's Children's Hospital No. 9, armed with boxes of toys and wall stickers to brighten up the burn unit.
The hospital staffers were a little hesitant at first when the pack of fresh-faced London schoolgirls arrived to volunteer their services. Dressed in shorts and identical red and white "Russia 1994" T-shirts, they look more like a sports team than a traveling band of good samaritans.
"The nurses didn't know what to do with us," said one of the girls. "They couldn't believe we were here to clean up their hospital."
But once they started scrubbing the ward and decorating the walls with Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, and Paddington Bear, the suspicious stares of the medical staff melted to smiles and heavily accented greetings of "Good morning."
"We all felt like doing something worthwhile before going off to university," said Jennie Mattan, one of the initiators of the trip. Inspired by a television program on Romanian orphanages, Mattan and Samantha Hayes decided to gather a group of their friends to work at a children's hospital in need of their help.
A teacher put them in contact with the Friends of Russian Children, a British charity that works with Hospital No. 9, to talk about volunteering during their summer vacation. Once they calculated that they had to raise ?8,000 (about $12,000) to get here, their friends and family were convinced they would not make it.
"It was a real challenge," says Mattan, "but the more people didn't believe we could do it, the more we wanted to." They raised the money by organizing charity balls and raffles -- they even sponsored a somersault-a-thon, enlisting the support of the school gymnastics team.
"We did 625 somersaults in an hour and a half," says Karen Watts, the group's gymnast who organized the event.
With persistence and a little help from their sponsors, the group made their $12,000 goal just a few weeks before taking their university entrance exams in June. They may be giving up their summer vacation, but, as Samantha Hayes, 17, says, "We're having an adventure instead."
In addition to brightening up the ward with cartoon characters, the girls set aside some time to play with the children. Except for Fridays, which is bandage changing day, most of the patients are eager for entertainment and find the newcomers a welcome distraction.
"They were shy at first, but now they're quite mischievous with us," says Hayes, waving at Ira, a coquettish 8-year-old who was the first to break the ice. Sasha, 10, whose legs were badly burned when his friends threw a lit bottle full of gasoline at him, was not far behind. He has become a loyal mascot of the group, unperturbed by the language barrier between them.
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