From Fixing Mistakes to Building Strengths

The smile, stickers and Halloween candy I’d brought as a USRVI volunteer weren’t enough. Sasha needed much more than I could give in just one hour, and I had no idea where to start.

At 15, he had run away from the orphanage to go home—many children in Russian state institutions have at least one living parent—and found things there in a state of chaos. Orphanage staff heard he was begging on the local electrichka train, found him and brought him back.

Sasha was hunched silently over a piece of scrap paper, doodling wavy ballpoint lines. “I wasn’t on the electrichka,” he scowled. “I was home.” My gaze fell on the muddy black tattoo on his left arm – it was a similar design.

“I like your drawings,” I offered in Russian. “Do you like to draw?”

“I guess.”

“Who did your tattoo?” I began mentally polishing my harm-reduction vocabulary.

“Me.”

“You know, a lot of diseases can be carried by the tattoo needles into your blood. So you should use a clean one and don’t share – you might get HIV or hepatitis.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t really think anything I’d said would affect Sasha’s behavior – how could it? We are all shaped by the influences around us, the choices we do or don’t have. I went home angry that day, unable to accept that the adults in Sasha’s life had failed him—and frustrated that as a cultural outsider, untrained and temporary in this community, I couldn’t do anything to help.

It’s been several years since I met Sasha, and I don’t know where he is now, but I thought of him a few weeks ago. I was in Moscow for the pilot-test of IREX’s new Positive Youth Development (PYD) curriculum, created for the Youth Development Competencies Program (YDCP). Aimed at Russian professionals who work with youth on a daily basis, the course is designed to build adults’ skills to create an atmosphere where all young people—including those considered at-risk, like Sasha—feel supported, valued, and challenged.

I’m excited to be part of the team developing IREX’s PYD curriculum, which is quite different from the top-down style of the Soviet youth organizations many Russian adults experienced. It’s a challenge in any culture to change our approach. Traditionally, American youth workers also focused, like I did with Sasha, on fixing immediate risky behaviors rather than building assets – what PYD researchers call “positive experiences and qualities that can help youth become caring, responsible adults.”

As youth practitioners, it’s our responsibility to create a supportive environment where all youth can learn and grow into healthy adulthood. All young people have needs – for structure and safety, relationships, belonging, self-worth, a sense of mastery and control over their lives. If families, schools, and institutions don’t meet these needs, youth will look to satisfy them elsewhere – through negative relationships, substance abuse, or even the extreme nationalist movements that are gaining notoriety in Russia.

“Sasha has everything here – food, a roof over his head, clothes, friends,” the orphanage director lamented during my visit. “Isn’t that better than the electrichka?”

Unfortunately, that’s not always enough.