Orphans now safe
Kind hearts pay for rescue
THESE exhausted children are some of the 52 orphans evacuated from war-torn Ukraine with the help of big-hearted Sunday People readers.
You raised an amazing £50,000 last week – £25,000 of it on Sunday alone – which went towards rescuing the kids from their orphanage in Dnipro as Russian bombs rained down.
Today they are recovering in the safety of the Romanian city of lasi after a gruelling two-day ordeal escaping Russian invaders.
The plan by charity Hope and Homes for Children is to keep them as close to their own country as possible so they can be reunited with extended family who survive.
In the meantime, they will be carefully tracked and placed with families in Romania so they cannot fall into the hands of traffickers.
The children aged between six months and 12 years left Dnipro in eastern Ukraine by train at 8.30pm on Wednesday to make the hazardous journey towards the Romanian border and sanctuary.
The 52, including seven babies, plus 11 carers, charity workers and their families, arrived at Vynnytsk at midnight on Thursday. They then had a three-hour bus ride to the border where they had to disembark. Other refugee families helped them cross on foot into Romania and the Blue Dot UN processing centre. Then it was another 10-hour drive before they reached lasi by coach.
Wayne Cornish, of Hope and Homes, which is dedicated to ending orphanages worldwide so children are placed in loving families instead of institutions, said: “We are not a humanitarian emergency response agency, but today we are humanitarians responding to an emergency.”
The charity’s country director Halyna, who has remained in Kyiv, added: “It was a long and emotional journey but the children coped unbelievably well and are now safe and receiving psychological support.
It is brilliant the Sunday People launched this lifesaving appeal
Cowering
“We are ensuring they are not lost into far away institutions around the world.
“They are relocated with their care-givers – the ones who know their individual needs, treatments or simply their preferences”.
Sunday People readers gave generously to our appeal, backed by Labour leader Keir Starmer, after we featured other orphans cowering in the basement of a baby home in Kyiv last week. No one knows what has become of those children.
Charity patron General Lord Dannatt, former chief of the defence staff, said: “It is brilliant the Sunday People launched this appeal to help these children.
“Readers of the Sunday People have been incredibly generous. I hope this continues so
that Hope and Homes for Children can keep helping the hidden victims of this war.”
The charity’s boss Mark Waddington added: “The generosity of readers has been incredible.
“The speed at which donations were made has enabled us to evacuate children from grievous danger and place them in safe care.
“And we have done this without cutting ties with their communities and families so that the hope of returning home when it is safe remains alive.
“We have also been able to provide emergency relief – food, blankets and mattresses – to some of the most vulnerable families facing the most distressing circumstances.” Ukraine has 100,000 orphans, the highest number in Europe, who lived in 700 state-run orphanages before the war because parents were unable to care for them.
Hope and Homes rescued another 50 children, from Vorzel near the capital, who were bussed away when their orphanage was hit by an illegal Russian cluster bomb. They escaped without casualties.
The Dnipro children sheltered in a community centre for seven days but were moved again when that became unsafe. But nowhere is safe in Dnipro as the fighting intensifies.
Contact
Meanwhile, a Briton who travelled to Poland to search for a refugee to whom he could offer a room under the Homes For Ukraine scheme is waiting for the green light to bring him back to the UK.
Max Fox, 32, of Poulton-le-fylde, Lancs, made contact with a 26-year-old man named Vlad on Friday and said he put the application through to the UK Government scheme as soon as he could.
Max, an artistic director for a group of hotels in Blackpool, said: “We are now waiting for the green light to fly him over.
“In the meantime, I’m going to keep him in a hotel pending the outcome as the Government have given no timelines of how long it will take.”
nigel.nelson@people.co.uk