|
Deanne Macewko Help Us Help The Children (HUHTC), a project of Children Of Chornobyl Canadian Fund, is a voluntary, non-profit charitable initiative dedicated to improving the quality of life of children living in orphanages in Ukraine. Help Us Help The Children consists of a dedicated core of volunteers who have committed significant time and energy towards achieving our missions. We ensure that the basic needs of disadvantaged and orphan children in Ukraine - many of them victims of Chornobyl disaster - are met. The key principle underlying our organization’s mission is a strong belief in individual responsibility. Our organizational structure is based upon a model where relatively small teams carry a specific project through its various phases - each team is thus responsible for the results of their activities. Specific individuals at each orphanage are made responsible for safekeeping and distribution of the resources we provide. Their incentives stem from the genuine concern for the children living in the orphanages and desire to secure continued aid from HUHTC. We believe that in the long run, it is essential that today’s orphans become tomorrow’s productive and self-sufficient adults. We believe that individuals can make a difference in creating a better world and that each of us is responsible for finding ways to achieve this. In the past 10 years volunteers have delivered humanitarian aid to orphanages throughout Ukraine. To date, outreach teams have traveled a combined distance of over 250,000 km through 25 oblasts (provinces). More than 40,000 in some 200 orphanages, 16 hospitals, rehabilitation centers and clinics have benefited from supplies of medicine, food and clothing as well as educational toys and materials. Volunteer professionals working with HUHTC have personally distributed over 600,000 kg of purchased and/or donated goods with a retail value of approximately $12,500,000. During the past seven years HUHTC has run camps to provide opportunities for youth residing in orphanages to acquire life skills and better develop their potential in a non-institutional setting. More than 160 North American volunteers from HUHTC worked with Ukrainian educators to run these camps in the Carpathian Mountains for over 2,100 orphans. Computer skills training is also provided. The camp computers are then installed in orphanages to enhance their communication capability. HUHTC also supports the professional development of institutional managers as well as scholastic and technical achievement of orphanage graduates. To date, 19 orphanage graduates have received scholarships to pursue post-secondary education. Anti-Trafficking Initiative
|
