History and background

Eugenia Tymoshenko

President of Association of international and Ukrainian public organizations "Social protection":

"Children - you are our future. It is you who will write pages in the book of our history. We hope that possibilities which will be open to you and standards of living will be better than ours! This festival and our communication will give you the opportunity to understand the importance of hard work, commitment and ability to dream and to learn to achieve your goals and fulfil your dreams. Your personal development is of critical importance both to you and to us. I heartily wish you creative successes, joy of victory and fulfilment of your desires! Believe in fairy tales and all the best in life! We love you!"

Irina Volgina

President of International public organization: "Follow Your Dream":

"Children - you are our hope, our dreams! Our most blessed and important part of life! Let each of you experience a lot of magic moments in his life, feel the love of people who surround you, have happiness, smiles and lots of joy! Believe in yourself, trust your heart, your desires, fulfill your dreams though daily hard work and then one day you will become masters of your own destiny! I wish you to strive for victory! Do your best and let us make your dreams come true together!"

Founding of the organization was preceded by years of experience its organizers had with children of socially-disadvantaged groups

For more than 10 years our initiative group helped children from boarding schools and orphanages. Visiting boarding schools we improved facilities of their pupils, conducted master classes in art and creative contests, held relay races to support children.

Through continuous interaction with such children we saw that each of them has not only his own dreams and talents but also an irresistible longing for self-realization and desire to be heard. Sadly, because of unfortunate life circumstances and hard living conditions it is extremely difficult for them to achieve. The idea of creating a festival emerged naturally, as an attempt to help as many children as possible.

Charity Festival of Children's Arts "Follow the Dream" was founded in 2007. Since then it has been held annually.

First two festivals were held in Crimea, while third festival was in Kyiv. Fourth festival traveled across Ukraine: festive events for children were held in Kherson, Zaporozhye, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Ivano-Frankivsk and Kyiv.

Fifth festival gathered its participants in Kyiv and will have its culmination as a grand gala concert for children, who will perform together with Ukrainian pop stars on the main stage of Palace "Ukraine".

Festival events are absolutely free for children to attend and all its activities are possible only due to hard work of festival organizers and partners who support it.

Festival achievements over 5 years of activity

• More than 5000 children deprived of parental care got under the patronage of the Festival
• More than 10 children were adopted
• More than 100 boarding schools and orphanages in Ukraine took part in festival competitions
• More than 700 talented children from orphanages visited Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, enjoyed the comfort and hospitality of the European-level hotels "Rus" and "Baccara" and for the first time visited workshops attended by their favorite stars
• Hundreds of orphans found new friends and godfathers among partners of the festival
• More than 50 stars representing Ukrainian and foreign stage contributed to the festival
• More than 60 teachers of boarding schools and orphanages of Ukraine visited two-day training and gained new knowledge and a huge impetus to improve their work with children. Starting September 2011 and at the numerous requests from teachers of boarding schools and orphanages IPO "Follow Your Dream" initiated a series of on-site trainings
• Dozens of new partners joined our charity project
• 25 children were sent to International Children Festival "Slavonic crown" in Bulgaria and some of them became prizewinners or took the first place
• Two children took part in Junior Eurovision in 2010
• Festival participans got a unique chance to express themselves and show their talents in front of broad audience on the big stage, alongside with their favorite stars and idols. They finally were heard, and, most importantly - children received a huge incentive for self-cultivation.