ROTARY SUPPORTS UKRAINE - DONATE HERE

Like Rotarians all over the World we are doing our bit to support the people of Ukraine.

We are out collecting donations but if you would like to donate now then you can do so by making a payment to our Charity Account as Follows:

Rotary Club of Chestfield

Sort Code: 60-10-37

Account No: 13515799

Reference: Ukraine

Send us an email with your name, house name or number and post code and we can claim Gift Aid to add to your donation to dsmann50@msn.com .

We will not use your contact details for any other purpose.

Thank you for your support.

Rotary Club of Chestfield Charity Trust Fund Reg No 1113474

We are proud to have donated almost £4000 to various support groups working in Ukraine, including a £500 donation from Whitstable Short Mat Bowls Club who sadly had to close and wanted to make a difference for those suffering now and in the future in Ukraine.

Details of a group of children and their helpers we have supported:

The Orphans of Lysychansk

A few months after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the invaders turned their attention to the city of Lysychansk, the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in the Luhansk region of the Donbas in the east of the country.     Lysychansk was effectively surrounded as the Russian artillery sledgehammer, freely able to hit all access routes in and out of the city, carried out its standard scorched-earth tactic of levelling everything that opposed it.      Random and indiscriminate, shells and missiles rained down on the city with explosions every few minutes destroying buildings, power and water supplies, leaving thousands of civilians without basic necessities and forced to live wherever they could find shelter.

For two weeks, a group of orphans and their carers cowered in an improvised shelter in the basement of their orphanage to escape the shelling and destruction.     There these children had to endure trials that would have driven many adults to despair as they learned to determine just by sound alone what shells, missiles and mines the invader was using and what no child should ever need to know: how to react to air attacks and bombing, what to do, where to run and how to behave.   After enduring such hell, their carers felt it imperative to flee the city and save the children! The group fled in just what they were wearing, leaving everything else behind.     This was not the first time that these children and their carers had had to flee to safety leaving behind everything they had known.    In 2014, when the region where they lived was forcibly taken by the Russians, rather than risk abduction by the invaders, their settled lives were turned upside down as they fled to start again in Lysychansk.

For two days and nights after fleeing Lysychansk, the group made their way through the surrounding forest in constant fear of running into hostile Russian military patrols.   

Eventually, they were able to reach a railway station from where it was possible for them to leave for the Kharkiv Region, at that time territory still controlled by Ukraine, where it was safe for them - but only for a while!    The war reached them yet again and they had to move once more, this time right across to the west of Ukraine and the relative safety of Izmail, a pretty, historic town and river port in the Odessa Region on the banks the Danube that provides access to the Black Sea and forms the border with Romania which is barely 250 metres away across the river.   

In Izmail, the children were warmly welcomed as the people of the town rallied to help the fugitives and the Rector of the Izmail University for the Humanities accommodated them in one of the university dormitories paying all their utility bills and providing food and, perhaps, just as essential, psychological support in an effort to make their lives as normal as possible.    Chestfield Rotary Club raised the funds to provide the children with a refrigerator and organised a Rotary District grant and other significant funding to pay for the replacement of an almost unserviceable water-supply pipe to the University which enabled more accommodation to be made available and the group grew with the arrival of a number of orphans from Lviv.

Sadly, their safe haven was not to last.    When the Russians pulled out of the deal allowing the export of millions of tons of Ukrainian grain, they almost immediately set out to destroy the grain-shipping facilities of Ukraine starting with the major-export hub of Odessa and then the smaller ports on the Black Sea coast.    With the Black Sea ports effectively blocked, the relatively minor Danube ports of Reni and Izmail became crucial to global food supplies, responsible for nearly a third of Ukraine’s agricultural exports, but it was only a question of time before they would also become a target for Russian missiles and drones - as was Izmail when a grain silo and an estimated 40,000 tons of grain were destroyed.   For the safety of the children, it was reluctantly felt necessary to move them yet again to another new home in an empty house in Artsyz, a small, rural town, away from the coast, about halfway between Izmail and Odessa, where, although they were out of the likely line-of-fire and had a roof over their heads, the children and their carers had virtually nothing.     As a result of the Russians deliberately targeting key infrastructure, power outages were, and still are, frequent throughout Ukraine and their immediate need for a generator, a cooker and a washing machine was met by an American charity which has been helping orphanages in Ukraine for decades while Chestfield Rotary Club sent funds to provide them with a freezer, a vacuum cleaner and a TV set.

It is difficult to comprehend what these children experienced and what they have suffered.    Growing up in an orphanage, without the security of a settled family life, is difficult enough despite the love and support of their wonderful carers but they have also had to endure weeks underground in a city under siege and constant moves to find safety away from the horrors of the unprovoked war afflicting their country.     

The orphans in their new home in Artsyz with the freezer and vacuum cleaner funded by Chestfield Rotary Club.

Sadly, Ruslan Karabadjak, pictured above with the children has since died and our link with the orphans is no more but I hope that they have found some peace and security in their new home.

David Kingham

Rotary Club of Chestfield