An email from former Ukraine Adoption Blogger, Angela highlights the ongoing needs of the children in that country, and a fundraising project in the works now.
The 85 boys of the Teterevka orphanage, almost all ill and disabled, are in urgent need of food, shoes, and more, and An Orphan’s Bright Star is asking for donations.
From the charity:
Teretevka is home to 85 special needs boys aged 7 to 25 yrs. 60% of these boys are ill, and a large percentage are invalids. They have so many critical needs. These boys are so skinny it breaks my heart.
We have started a food drive to help. We’ve calculated that 6 dollars per month per child will provide the basics in nourishment to Teretevka’s children.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
They are also announcing an exhibit/fundraiser to be held on the 3rd of November at the M2 Gallery in Houston, Texas, that will feature the work of Ukrainian artist Lydia Bodna-Balahutrak.
Her work is magnificent … and disturbing … and the cause is great, so if you’re in the area, make a point of stopping by.
Angela listed many charities that serve the needs of children of Ukraine here, here, and here.
Like so many of the countries our kids come from, Ukraine’s history is bloody and grim.
This story from the AP details memories of the Holocaust that plague the oldest in the country.
From the porch of her mud hut, Vera Filonok saw tens of thousands of Jews shot, thrown in a ravine and set on fire. Many were still alive and they writhed in the flames “like flies and worms.”
A team of investigators led by a French priest has been collecting the accounts of atrocities from witnesses over the past six years in efforts to make up for the years of Soviet rule that refused to acknowledge the massive and systematic murder of Jews that took place in Ukraine.
It was Romanians and Ukrainians that started the killing by locking rounded up Jews in a pigsty and setting it alight. It continued from there.
The head of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies has said, “… there is no longer that endless untruthful silence that existed in Soviet Ukraine.”
On the positive news front, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych is voicing enthusiasm for space projects and stating that the country will have opportunities for participate in many.
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has awarded honorary diplomas to a group of Ukrainians living abroad and is looking at further cooperation between the Ministry and Ukrainian scientists on researches of legal, cultural, scientific, and social problems of Ukrainian communities abroad.
And a British entrepreneur is about to invest a whole lot of money in projects in Ukraine, most involving mining in the Beregovo district, one of the largest undeveloped ore fiends in Europe.
Stating that he hopes the elections at the end of this month lead to greater stability, he says such an outcome would allow Ukraine to, “… emerge as one of the powerhouses of central Europe and develop an economy that would surprise many people in western Europe.”
That would be nice.