Happy Camp, Ukraine

My Solidarity Holiday started at the airport counter justifying to the agent why my bags weighed so much. I explained my bags were stuffed with pins, T-shirts, towels and maple syrup for a humanitarian project in the Ukraine. That was enough for the agent to wave the standard $150 surcharge for extra baggage. At the other end of the journey were some 600 kids at “Happy Camp”, an ArcelorMittal overnight camp on the Black Sea. The kids, from 6 to 16, are all family members of ArcelorMittal employees that can spend 3 weeks of their summer at the camp.

I was there with several ArcelorMittal colleagues from Brazil, Mexico, France, The Czech Republic, Kazakhstan and China. We had to present to the campers about our country and then each day we worked with different groups of the kids. The language is Russian – a lot of the kids speak only broken English, but they tried so hard.

For my presentation, I prepared PowerPoint slides about Canada and Hamilton, and brought souvenirs for the kids to keep. I shared a bit about our culture (and made sure to include hockey!) and our geography.

The camp activities included a lot of drama and dance and there was a show everyday. We had to practice our last show for 3 days! One of the performances had groups of the kids presenting each of the countries. For our show, the kids wore the Canada t-shirts I brought, sang an Avril Lavigne song and danced. I brought out the Canadian flag.

Every morning the kids did their exercises on the beach in the morning, then had breakfast. The rest of the morning they practiced for their shows. From 1:30 to 4 everyone, even the older kids, had sleep time. I shared a room with the two other guys on the trip from France and from Mexico. Our accommodation was modest – I brought pictures home to show my kids so they had an idea of what it was like. The stuff they do at Happy Camp is incredible. The dance and drama with full costumes is unbelievable. Every night was a full on show! Plus, I felt like a movie star. Everywhere you went there were pictures, pictures, pictures. The last day of the show, a little girl asked for my autograph on her arm. Then another. Then another. Even on the day we arrived there was a welcome team that sang for us. It was overwhelming.

While our group wasn’t able to have a plant tour like the other Solidarity teams I was fortunate to be able to meet and talk to the other employees on my team from all over the globe and learn what their sites are like and what they do. This is my 33rd year at Dofasco. This really opened my eyes to ArcelorMittal to see what we are doing as a global company. Since I’ve been back I’ve been emailing my new friends from other ArcelorMittal plants. We all miss the kids and the excitement of the trip. The experience changed me and I hope more of my colleagues will have a chance to experience this.