Work Practice

The fixed rehabilitation program at the Village of Hope includes classes, household chores, duties, responsibilities, work training and work practice.

Each person participating in the rehabilitation program has to work six hours a day in accordance with his/her skills, abilities and health. In essence, it is work practice which is an opportunity given to every person in the program to gain and improve work-related knowledge and skills. It is also work training to facilitate the restoring or obtaining of the people’s work habits.

Work practice lays a foundation for theirs ability to succeed in their future life. It is elementary that one needs to do the routine jobs of taking care of one’s living place, cooking, cleaning and giving one’s input to developing the village. But the main basis for our work practice is our industry – the sawmill, and building and logging work.

In the timber industry the people work on bend saw, rack saw, lumber edgerand a few other timber processing devices. They make pallets, vegetable crates and fulfill other customised orders. One of the branches is making and marketing firewood. We build too, but only for the Village of Hope – all our houses have been built by joint work of our staff, participants of the program and volunteers.

In winter we do logging in the woods – we make firewood to heat the buildings in the Village of Hope. There are also a lot of grounds maintenance jobs: shovelling snow in winter, raking dead leaves in autumn, mowing the lawn in summer, etc.

Women work in the kitchen, sew and take care of the dining table.

Work practice is always carried out under close supervision by our leaders who are very strict about following the rules of work culture and occupational safety.

The aim of work practice is to restore or build up the program participants work habits; to teach them work ethic and sense of duty; to teach them how to deal with problems that arise in the course of work process and solve them together with their work mates; to teach them to follow the rules of occupational safety and other guidelines.