Chernobyl Children in Need Supporting needy children in and around the village of Ozarichi,Belarus.

The three main thrusts of CCIN are
1) To encourage individuals to sponsor poor and sick children from Ozarichi
2) To collect donated goods (toys, medicines, clothes) for transport by lorry to Ozarichi
3) To get funding for specific projects (such as building and renovating toilets)

HOORAY, the last lorry went over successfully!

We send around two lorries a year, one in Spring and another in early Autumn.

They carry anything we can fit into it which can be used to benefit the children. For example one lorry contained, amongst other things, 200 tennis balls, 250 containers of antibiotics, and 1800 pairs of shoes!! The aid that we sent once cleared by customs was stored at the main School for 3 months ( yes 3 months ).
Due to the huge and pointless bureaucratic system every box had to be opened and absolutely everything big or small had to be itemised and recorded and then allocated. The medical items had even more paperwork!
So it took 5 teachers three months working several hours an evening , but they were happy to do this due to the benefits of the goods supplied
Every child in Ozarichi and the two hamlets in the catchment area received new shoes and clothes as well as the children attending the Special Needs School , Kindergarten and Main School.

Specific Items sought for four Childrens' Institutions

Our Chernobyl Children's' Charity has agreed to undertake, the acquisition of a large number of specifically required items of medical and general internal equipment for the 4 educational and medical institutions serving Ozarichi village in southern Gomel, where our Charity is based.

The four institutions are the large village Hospital, the Senior Secondary School, the Special Needs School and the Orphanage/Kindergarten, all of which serve around 5-600 children, most of whom are suffering from radiation-related health problems in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and who are living in the catchement area of Ozarichi, on the edge of the emptied exclusion zone.

The hospital is dealing on a day to day basis with hundreds of irradiated children who have developed a wide range of serious symptoms and illnesses attributable to the contamination, which they cannot avoid, and which badly affects their body immune systems, their thyroids and other internal organs. The Special Needs School (for older children) and the Orphanage/Kindergarten (for younger children) both struggle, with little government funding, to accommodate, educate, and support large numbers of orphaned and handicapped children, a sizeable proportion of whom are directly or indirectly victims of the nuclear catastrophe. Even in the Main Senior village school of several hundred children, the problems which the radiation causes is manifest and has a considerable impact upon all children's education, which is disrupted by absenteeism, as they are unwell so much of the time.

All four institutions are pathetically basic and very under-equipped , with virtually no western European technology to be found anywhere - whether in kitchens, bathrooms, classrooms, dormitories, hospital wards or treatment rooms. The conditions resemble those found in this country in the first half of the last century - and this for a country brought to its knees by the nightmare of Chernobyl and its aftermath, which stretches depressingly into the far-distant future.

We aim to send over materials for the new Special Needs Toilet (see the Projects page) and the following items (bought or donated).

Click here for a detailed list of items we desperately need.

Can you donate any items??? Could you help to fund the purchase of some of them?