YABLUNIVKA, Ukraine – When a delivery team from Hope for Orphans arrived at Yablunivka orphanage in Chernihiv Oblast, 150 kilometers northeast of Kyiv on Feb. 12, the children were singing and dancing.
They were getting an early start on celebrating Valentine’s Day in their school assembly hall, and wearing flamboyant but ill-matched outfits.
Eight-year-old Ivan Oleksiyenko didn’t care much for the concert. He told the Kyiv Post he’d like to drive a train.
“I dream of becoming a locomotive driver,” he said, while scrutinizing the camera of a Kyiv Post photographer. “And a photographer. I may do both – drive a train and take photographs,” he said, smiling.
The clothes – coats, sneakers and boots – delivered on this day came from $10,000 raised by singer-actress Kamaliya, the wife of Kyiv Post publisher Mohammad Zahoor. The funds are proceeds from the Kamaliya Foundation’s annual St. Nicholas Charity Night on Dec. 18.
The Kyiv Lions Club participated in the event, selected Hope for Orphans as the beneficiary and its members helped make the deliveries.
Hope for Orphans founder Evgenii Ivashko, 38, told the Kyiv Post that while these children require material aid, love is what they need most.
“Today we’re only bringing clothes to them,” Ivashko said. “But that’s not what they really need.”
They need to live in families, he said. Now some 85,000 Ukrainian children live in orphanages. During their trip on the eve of the Valentine’s Day, Hope for Orphans delivered aid – and kindness – to 150 children.
“They need to be taught how to live in normal families, how to do those things that are usual for us, but not for them,” Ivashko said. “They need our time and love.”
Hope for Orphans depends on corporate philanthropy, using donations to purchase essentials for orphans and deliver them straight to the children.
“We officially established our organization in 2008. Charitable funds trust us, because we don’t just talk – we do real things instead,” Ivashko said.
The volunteers contact the directors of orphanages and ask them about the children’s needs. Usually they need clothes, according to Ivashko.
“We brought little presents for you, but you deserve more,” Ivashko said into a microphone while standing on the stage of the Yablunivka orphanage’s assembly hall. “God loves you. In order to prove it, He sent us here. We believe you’ll become good moms and dads.”
The reasons children end up in orphanages are depressingly familiar, says Yuriy Kovbasko, director of the Stara Basan orphanage, which Hope for Orphans also visited on Feb. 12.
“There are parents who drink. Some of them who are not drinkers are just extremely negligent,” Kovbasko said.
Many orphaned children in rural areas are forgotten and get little attention, as they live far away from cities and the roads are awful, says Liliia Chernitskaya, a Hope for Orphans volunteer.
But despite this, the director of the Yablunivka orphanage, Nelya Shapovalenko, believes that all the orphans in her charge have great potential.
“Our children are beyond their years,” Shapovalenko told the Kyiv Post. “Yes, they’re not very confident, but we’ll always help them.”
