Sweets and colorful things for refugee children

Created: 04/08/2022, 11:00 am

Easter gifts for refugees (from left): Mayor Manfred Walter, teacher Manuela Pfisterer, Nazar (12 years old), Michael Gsandner (Salvia Elektrotechnik), teacher Susanne Mattes, Maria (9 years old), Malte Neugebauer (youth club), Gleb (4 years old). Grandmother Natalie, district farmer Anita Painhofer, Jochen Beier and Oliver Glöggler (both board members of Raiffeisenbank).

© andrea jaksch

Pupils from the Arnoldus elementary school in Gilching made very special Easter baskets.

This week she was handed over to refugee children from Ukraine.

Gilching

– Nazar, Maria and Gleb are gently holding what appears to be a cloth-wrapped baby.

In fact, the bundle also contains very fragile things: chocolate Easter bunnies and brightly colored eggs, wrapped in a towel and carefully tied with a bow.

The children of the Arnoldus elementary school collected these sweet but also practical Easter gifts and wrapped them up nicely.

Many learned how to tie a bow.

The children and teachers of the 17 classes collected towels, the Raiffeisenbank Gilching donated the sweets together with the company Salvia Elektrotechnik.

District farmer Anita Painhofer was the "Easter bunny" and brought 400 beautifully colored eggs.

"Of course from the region, because we want to know where it comes from," she said when the Easter gifts were presented at the Gilchinger Rathausturnhalle.

They are intended for children from the Ukraine who found a first refuge in the hall with their families (we reported).

The idea for this big fundraiser came up during a youth painting competition.

"We wanted to create an Easter welcome greeting together," said Gilching's Mayor Manfred Walter.

The elementary school students had painstakingly made the Easter baskets, as teacher Susanne Mattes explains.

The nest itself was the useful towel, in it lay the sweets, colored eggs and, above all, letters.

The first graders would have copied a text from the blackboard, the older ones would have written Easter greetings themselves.

"In Ukrainian and English," explains Mattes.

This Easter is difficult for the refugees who have arrived in the Gilchinger Gymnasium, as it is for Raisa Tereshchenko from Kyiv, who observed the donation handover.

She said in German that Easter and Christmas are celebrated twice in Ukraine.

Because Easter does not usually fall on the same day in the Eastern and Western Churches.

"Then there are even several public holidays," she said.

Easter is even more important to Ukrainians than Christmas, Tereshchenko said.

The family in particular is at the center of Ukrainian Easter customs.

Families come from far away to celebrate with traditional dishes such as Easter bread, the so-called Paska, and artistically painted eggs.

"There are things that don't need language," said Malte Neugebauer, head of the open youth center for Gilching and the surrounding area, who also actively organizes donations and help with the young people (we reported).

The 450 Easter nests at the Arnoldus elementary school are such things.

Signs of welcome, joy and hope - everything that Easter means in these latitudes.  

Juliana Daum