If you happen to get a Christmas or New Year gift that you find useless, do not rush to toss it away – there are people for whom those presents might bring joy.
The
Kyiv Post selected several places where you may donate your gifts for those in
need.
Orphanages
Clothing
for kids, toys and accessories would be
wonderful gifts to orphans. Sweets, cookies, chocolate and citruses are needed
in publicly and privately run orphanages as an austerity-minded government
lacks costs to provide them with fruits and sweets.
Mykhaylo Horodetsky
Orphanage in Kyiv Oblast is obviously short of food. Its management is looking
for those willing to donate buckwheat, sugar,
rice, sunflower oil cabbage and potatoes to the orphans.
Mykhalo Horodetsky Orphanage
Vorzel, Kyiv Oblast
35 Lenina St.
Tel. (4597) 297 46257
www.domiki.civicua.org/contacts.html
Homes for the elderly
Small cute trinkets always
bring much joy to the elderly who live in the Rostmistrivsky Hospice, volunteer
Maryna Bochko says.
“I noticed that they
become happy like children when they receive religious calendars, little
souvenirs, marshmallows or candied fruit jellies,” Bochko says adding that a small
talk and a bit of attention are the best presents for the 69 elderly people
leaving in the hospice.
Rostmistrivsky Hospice
Cherkasy Oblast,
Rostmistrivka village,
2 Horkoho St.
Tel.
(04733) 95339
Animal shelters
Sirius,
an asylum for homeless dogs and cats, shelters more than 2,000 animals. “We
need volunteers to help us prepare food for animals, clean cages, comb and give
haircuts to some very shaggy pets,” asylum’s head Oleksadra Mezinova said.
They
would be also happy to get chicken meat and toys for their puppies. “By petting
and communicating with animals one may meet a grateful and devoted friend here
and take it home,” Mezinova adds.
Sirius animal shelter
Kyiv
Oblast, Fedorivka village
Tel.
(050) 424 23 00
(096) 424
23 00
Church’s social care
Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a monastery, gathers clothes for
the poor. “During winter, poor people come and ask mostly for jackets, coats
and warm sweaters,” fr. Lavrentiy, head of the monastery’s social
service center, said.
Thanks to the kind-hearted people, church servants gather
lots of warm clothes, though footwear is still in deficit. “Every day the needy
come and ask me for some boots. But I have nothing to offer,” fr. Lavrentiy laments.
Kyiv
Pechersk Lavra
15 Lavrska St.
65 pavillion, room 215
Tel. (044) 255 11 19
(067) 429 90 94 Mykhaylo, assistant of fr.
Lavrentiy
Libraries
Unwanted books may receive a second chance in a
library. Donating books to the libraries is an old charity tradition,
librarians say.
“Half of our book fund is replenished through charities,”
says Nadiya Strishynets, head of the information resources department at Vernadsky
National Library in Kyiv. The library welcomes scientific literature or any
Ukrainian books published in the 1920s and 1930s.
“We would also gratefully accept books in foreign
languages and foreign classical literature,” Strishynets adds.
Vernadskiy
National Library of Ukraine
3, 40-richchya Zhovtnya avenue
Tel. (044) 524 35 92
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached
at [email protected].
