In 2012 volunteers met up once again in Ukraine, some arriving on the bus others doing the arduous journey by plane, train and automobile.
The first part of the summer we took part in a social / eco-project run by Ann Geraschenko in Ternova, near Kharkiv. We joined in activities such as village fairs and litter picks in the forest to encourage the people of the region to stop dumping waste in the forests and to clear the rubbish found there.
Our presence was such a novelty that national TV came to film. As a result of our intervention Ann’s eco-project has really taken off and the local authorities are now getting involved.
We also visited a ‘family style’ home being built at Rusty institute for over 35’s with special needs.
For the second half of the summer we returned to Kalinovka Orphanage and saw the new family style home “Happy House” (which FYP sponsored) open and now home to 9 of the orphans from the main building. We witnessed the remarkable difference it has made to to the lives of a small group of children and also heard about the project being expanded to include rebuilding another barn as a second family style home.
During this journey it became apparent that FYP should concentrate all its efforts into one project in Ukraine so as not to spread our resources too thinly. To this end we spent more time at Kalinovka and tried to interact more with the adults at the institution who live in very poor conditions with absolutely nothing to do.
After the reports from this journey had been seen by the trustees it was decided that FYP would concentrate its support in Ukraine to turning around the lives of those 120 people living at Kalinokva.
( read more about Kalinovka on our Current Projects page )