Singer-actress Kamaliya Zahoor, the wife of Kyiv Post publisher Mohammad Zahoor, on Dec. 6 held the most successful of her annual charity evenings so far.
The event, 4th St. Nicholas Charity Night at the Hilton Kyiv, raised $50,000 through auction and ticket sales.
Additionally, the Zahoors will donate additional money — enough to buy 10 Draeger Siemens Infinity Delta XL patient monitors — for the State Children’s Cardiac Center in yiv. The center performs 2,000 heart surgeries yearly and desperately needs more sophisticated equipment.
The entertainment made giving to charity an easier sell.
The emcee of St. Nicholas Charity Night, Andrey Djedjula, sells one of the charity auction’s lots – an oil painting with the starting price of $1,000, on Dec. 6. (Sergey Gritsenko)
The night’s theme was music from Oscar-winning movies. Kamaliya kickstarted the show with a performance of Donna Summer’s “Last Dance,” then Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” “Colors of The Wind” from the Disney classic “Pocahontas” and “Skyfall” from the James Bond movie of the same title.
“This one is the favorite song of my daughters,” Kamaliya said before performing “Let It Go,” a hit song from Disney’s “Frozen” and waving to her 4-year-old twins Arabella and Mirabella, dancing next to the stage.
Kamaliya performs at the 4th St. Nicholas Charity Night at the Hilton Kyiv. The event raised $50,000 for the State Children’s Cardiac Center. (Sergey Gritsenko)
She wasn’t the only voice on the stage that night. In keeping with her interest in promoting young musicians in Ukraine, she turned over the stage to aspiring children performers.
Karen van den Broek from Netherlands was one of the pleased guests of the charity night.
“This is my first time in Kyiv and I’m very impressed with the event. It is very lovely,” she told the Kyiv Post.
Van den Broek said that she was invited to the charity night by a friend and came to Kyiv with her daughter for just one day to visit it.
St. Nicholas Charity Night, run by the Kamaliya Foundation, has been held in the first part of December since 2014 for different beneficiaries each time: To raise money for children with Down Syndrome, children of killed Ukrainian soldiers and to buy medical equipment and winter clothing for orphans.
This year’s event was the most successful: It raised $50,000, a surge from the last year’s result of $18,000. Most of the funds — $37,000 — were raised through an auction, with $13,000 added by the ticket sales.
The initial goal was to raise money for 10 new patient monitors for the hospital, costing approximately $30,000 each, according to Deputy Director and Chief Medical Officer Volodymyr Zhovnir.
“Thank you, attendees, for being so generous. Kids will always remember your gesture,” Kamaliya posted on Facebook after the event. She added that she will cover additional cost so that children could get the equipment they need so much.
Charity auction
The charity auction sold antiques, designer clothes, perfumes, oil paintings, plane tickets and even luxury skis.
The cheapest lots were auctioned with a starting price of $1,000. The most expensive lot was two round-trip business-class tickets from Qatar Airways, to be used to go to any of its 150 destinations around the world. Starting at $5,000, the tickets were sold for $6,500.
Ukrainian artist Irina Tretiak was one of those who contributed a painting for the auction. She has known Kamaliya and Zahoor for a long time and was happy to join the auction that benefited children.
“I saw the video about the heart clinic we are raising money for, and I could not stop myself from crying like a child,” she said. “The equipment wears off itself, and we should buy a new one so that babies could survive.”
