5/7
The train ride back to Lviv from Uzghorod was again beautiful with Transcarpathian scenery, villages, mountains, forests and farms. Most of the day was spent on the train. Becky from International Networx who had given me the contact in Uzghorod, came on the train with me to visit Lviv.
As I arrived back I found out we had a meeting arranged with another couple who work with orphans and vulnerable children in Lviv at a local restaurant so we headed straight out there.
Tatiana and Victor’s story:
Tatiana set up an NGO called 3D – Let’s Help Kids, an NGO that works for institutionalised children. In Lviv ( as in Uzghorod) most of these children are neglected or abused rather than true orphans. Tatiana set it up herself in 2018 and since then she says she has been blessed with a good team. She said she felt led to work with ‘orphans’. Her organisation now has 20-30 volunteers and they plan to employ a project manager and a psychologist into the near future that will be paid.
She was an accountant and loved her job but didn’t feel a sense of purpose from it. She went on maternity leave and now she says she won’t go back to that job but rather take this on fulltime.
Their main activities happen every week. The stability that provides is one of the most important things. They do activities each week, sports, games etc and also share their faith with them. They figure that even if there are times they cannot be there for them, God can always be their comfort. They also do quite intense mentorship with the kids and their aim is for every child to have a mentor. She told us that often people think the children need gifts, money or food but mostly what they need is adults who care for them and want to spend time with them.
They put on a nice summer camp in a resort once but nearly every kid said the highlight for them was spending more time with their mentors.
The kids are all aged 6-17 that they work with. The average age is 12. 80 per cent are boys. About fifty per cent are abused or from neglectful families and the other fifty per cent are just really poor. Most of them are vulnerable because they come from families with alcohol abuse, single mothers, mothers with a mental illness and often social services brings them to the orphanage. Many of them have been badly neglected, quite a few have illnesses or congenital abnormalities. One boy was found by social services to be living in a room with a lot of dogs after he never turned up at school. He was non-verbal until the age of 7.
Getting medical care for these kids can be tricky. And it’s not always about money. For example they raised money for a boy to get an operation on his hip and leg but the director of the orphanage wouldn’t allow it because it would mean the workers would have to drive him to rehab every day and that was just too hard. A lot of the medical care is paid for by volunteers . But it can still be hard to get the orphanages to help facilitate things. They are tyring to use their
They do lots of other work too, for now they are advocating on behalf of the kids to get a director at one of the institutions sacked as he has been abusing the girls.
Their future plans are to partner with an organisation to open a centre where vulnerable kids can get food, clothes and activities. They also want to connect this to an early development centre for poor children where they can also learn life skills for independent living.
There is more of a move to de-institutionalise kids here but it requires families to put up their hands to look after some of these kids. They are currently building some accommodation for families who want to live with and mentor some of these kids.
The war has had a major impact on this situation and work. Many IDP’s have moved in Lviv for safety. So some of the children in Lviv have been shipped out of the country to make room for ones from the east fleeing Russian occupation. But it has still led to massive overcrowding with numbers more than doubling and there are not enough workers. The Volunteers have been going in and helping. The children from the East have had trouble adjusting psychologically as well. Many of them speak Russian and here mostly people speak Ukrainian. More than 50% of the kids in the orphanages at present are internally displaced from the East due to the war. They were already vulnerable, damaged children but now they have been affected by war and moved from their familiar environments. They see the extra trauma in the kids, they often don’t communicate with the workers, they only talk with kids they know, and they are often aggressive and distressed. This was a new experience for a lot of the volunteers. However already many of them have really responded to love and kindness. Many of the kids are also depressed and lacking in purpose.
Tatiana does not get an income from this work but she says her rewards are not financial. She is inspired by Christ’s example of living for others and not yourself.
Victor, Tatiana’s husband was also an orphan himself who has done well. He is in a unique position to empathise with these youth now and he is able to provide some income for the family.
Tatiana and Victor also mentor and look after two youth who have now left the orphanage and they are teaching them life skills in their home to help them transition into independent living.
Victor first became a Christian by talking with some people from an organisation that were helping older ‘orphans’. He had decided he wanted to work with orphans like he had been. He got together some friends who wanted to do the same but didn’t know where to start. Then one day he went to a church and saw Tatiana asking about volunteers to go and visit orphanages. He got her contacts and it all went from there – now they are married, they have a gorgeous 14 month old and their work with orphans had really started to get into gear just in time for them to be a valuable help to the many, many more who have arrived in Lviv as a result of this war.
6/7
My husband always joked I would be able to sleep through a missile attack, well turns out he is right. This morning at 3 a.m. the Russians struck Lviv with 10 kalibr missiles with 3 getting through air defence. I slept right through but John and Elsie whose hearing isn’t great – woke up! They heard the explosions and saw a flash. Later, speaking to locals we worked out the missiles were about 2-3km away. I’ve made sure my app is turned on now that gives out air raid sirens. The thing is that here in Lviv is meant to be pretty safe, but this is the worst bombing of the war for this western Ukrainian town. The locals are understandably in quite a bit of shock and feeling quite shaken given they had started to feel so safe in this part of the country. The missiles hit residential apartment buildings and thankfully a lot of people had gone to a shelter. But 4 were still killed ( this was later updated to 10) and I think nearly 60 injured. 50 apartment buildings were damaged and similar number of cars.
We headed off with Julia the translator and Peter, a doctor who volunteers for CMA, to just outside of Lviv to interview a young family who had escaped the war ravaged Bakhmut region earlier in the war and were now displaced people. The mother Irina fled with her husband and two young children aged 2 and 8 whilst pregnant. She told us that her entire village was razed to the ground. Not one building remains and anything that was left in the buildings was stolen by ‘those Russian thieves’. She told us tales of cruelty by Russian soldiers, of men who were beaten and their legs and arms broken and taken to Russia, elderly parents of some of her friends were murdered by Russian occupiers. Incredibly she said there are still around 300 people still living there without water or electricity much of the time and under shelling. Mostly elderly people who just didn’t want to leave the only home they knew. She has received videos and photos from back home which is how she knows there is nothing left. It is not the first time she has fled war. She previously lived in Donetsk and had to flee there when the Russians invaded in 2014 when she was pregnant with her oldest girl.
This time her girl Adelina has had some trouble adjusting to school after their evacuation from a war zone. To start with her kids would wake up screaming. She says they seem ok now most of the time but she knows Adelina who was once a good student, now can’t concentrate in class and is constantly in trouble or struggling. The flat she is in is a tiny one room apartment for all four of them with another on the way. Her littlest one, Amelia, that she was pregnant with when she fled the artillery in Bakhmut, was born with a cleft lip and palate and required extensive surgery and care. She had to handle all of this as an Internally Displaced Person having fled shelling with no belongings. I ask what her greatest wish is for the future of her baby, and she said tearily in Ukrainian, “I just hope that she is not also born with some problems as I don’t know if I could do all that again.” And her greatest wish… “I just want to go home… but for now there is no home to go to.”
We headed back home and dropped into a small farmers market on the way to grab some veges and fruit and then stopped somewhere for some nice lunch.
Peter also spoke to us on the way as he drove. He told us how he was living in Kyiv when the war started. He knew it had started because he heard explosions! He said nobody wanted to believe it would actually happen until it did. His wife was on the way to the South to visit her parents. He tried to get in a car to go get her but the traffic was crazy and everyone was trying to leave. He got hold of his wife who was on the train and was able to tell her to turn around and she got the last train back from Kherson to Lviv. Finally he was able to drive over to Lviv and meet her there and now they live here in Lviv. He told us that he believes every Ukrainian has been affected, even if it is just emotionally. When John asked him what effect the war is having on Christians he gave a similar answer to others. “I think it revealed a lot – revealed those who are really following the Christian values that Jesus preached and those who are not.” For example, those who stayed to help and serve the people compared to those who took the chance to get out. He spoke of his father-in-law who is a pastor and has a USA green card. He could have left easily. But he chose to stay and to stay in a dangerous region to serve his people. Many others fled.
In the evening we caught up with Becky the Texan missionary networker who was in Lviv for a few days break whilst waiting for her temporary residency. She had already connected me with some people and was lining up some others. She has worked for many many years across China, Belarus & Ukraine. We met at a Ukrainian restaurant so I got to enjoy some traditional dumplings ( called vareniky) filled with potato in a mushroom sauce.
