In this The Guardian article (25 February 2025) journalist Howard Amos talks about volunteering for a month during a summer camp at a state orphanage in Russia.

The orphanage took in children with physical and mental disabilities and the summer camp provided games, stage shows and sporting activities.

Amos volunteered for almost 10 years at the orphanage but says “it was the first visit that made the biggest impression”:

“My closest reference point was probably workhouses or orphanages from a Charles Dickens novel. I vividly remember the smells – cooked food, unwashed bodies, chlorine and urine – and how the children crowded you, grabbing hands and clothes, pinching, pulling hair, jostling and asking questions…Children vulnerable to self-harm were tied up.”