IT IS a picture of pure festive joy and the 13-year-old boy thinks the shoebox filled with the Christmas gifts that you collected is the best present he has ever been given.

Alim Deenison grew up in Simferopol, in the Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine, and has lived in the Yolochka Orphanage for the past two months.

A total of 7,000 boxes were collected in the Scarborough area, and they were donated to the annual shoebox appeal which is a project of the international charity Samaritan’s Purse.

A distribution team of volunteers from Operation Christmas Child travelled to Ukraine this month because it is when followers of the Orthodox church celebrate their Christmas and New Year.

Alim said: “Yes, of course I like the shoebox, I like everything in it and it was a surprise for me. I particularly like the pens, pencils and the notebooks, because we can use them to study during the lessons.”

He added that he particularly enjoyed lessons in physics and wanted to work as a driver when he was older.

Anna Shabanova, the manager of the orphanage, said his story was typical of the hardships faced by the many children who passed through the orphanage doors.

“His mother is an alcoholic and his father died when he was small,” she said. “When his mother has her men around the child is told to go elsewhere. He used to stay in the street in the cold.

“The main problem which leads to children being sent to the centres and orphanages is alcoholism. Alim has got used to the shelter and he has stopped crying at night.”

Under Ukrainian law the authorities need to get parental permission before children can be placed into the care system and if the permission is refused then the process goes through the courts.

Ms Shabanova said: “The boy will not be given back to his mother. We are going through the process of taking her parental rights away.”

She added the children were pleased to get the shoeboxes. She said: “The shoebox is a surprise for the kids. They don’t know what’s inside them and they are a great surprise in our shelter. They are getting excited about the candy and the toys. This gift for them is like manna from Heaven.”

Later that day the distribution team visited the Lozovskaya Boarding School which is in the middle of a heavily wooded area and has places for 300 children.

Yelena Himina, the school’s director, said: “This is the first time we’ve had 300 children here. Usually there are more and they come from all over the Crimea.”

She added the school specialised in treating children with speech impediments. She said: “They can’t read or write. Some children can’t speak because of nerve damage and they lost their ability to speak. They come here to restore it.”

There are 85 members of staff at the school as well as five speech therapists. “There are 141 orphans out of 320 children,” she said.

“There are children from bad families and some from good families who are here because of speech problems.”

Alexander Bonder runs a rehabilitation centre for street children in the village of Sadovoye and uses military-style discipline to bring structure to their chaotic lives.

He said: “One young boy was asked ‘where do you live?’ and he said ‘the third carriage in the railway station’. By bringing children here we can teach them that everything can be achieved by hard labour not by crime.”

Mr Bonder said the main problems he encountered with the children included drinking alcohol, smoking and drug abuse – with doctors estimating a total of 1,500 children addicted to drugs in the Crimean Peninsula.

“One child was given vodka from birth to help it sleep,” he said. “If parents don’t work with us we will ask the Government to deprive their parental rights. We think it’s better to live in an orphanage than with bad parents.”

From The Scarborough Evening News on Saturday, January 26, 2008.