Supporters of Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline from Cotham Parish Church have recently sent £1625 to the charity. Thank you all for your generosity! (This is in addition to the £1500 we sent in January 2020.) Nominally £900 of this is for the seven families we support, £500 towards the installation of a new bathroom for Nadezhda and Pavel described in an issue of Connections at the end of last year, including a longer bath and hoist enabling Pavel to have baths, and the rest towards the CCLL Covid-19 Appeal Programme. Mary Ingram and Sue Hawkins
Extracts from a letter from Dennis Vystavkin, Chief Executive of Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline
The supply lines into Belarus & Ukraine have been cut or significantly reduced thus limiting or stopping access to even the most basic items.
In Belarus, we formed a team of seamstresses and tailors who designed reusable PPE overall suits and tailor-fitted masks which can be washed and disinfected daily. Hence, CCLL is now also a garment manufacturer and supplier! We are working on a range of colours and styles at present. A large number of antibacterial germicidal lamps, boxes of gloves, respirators, pulse oximeters, contactless thermometers, electronic stick thermometers, surface and hand sanitisers were also supplied. Electric hand driers, as well as dishwashers supplied to orphanages and children’s social shelters, were much needed and urgently required. They could not even dream about having these items before.
Help was provided to social shelters, orphanages, schools and kindergartens, paediatric departments at district hospitals, local ambulance service stations, paediatric Covid teams, social workers as well as children’s home-based hospice teams. We even supplied microwaves, kettles and other household items for those medics who are staying at hospitals for weeks at a time so that they reduced the risk of the virus being passed to their families.
One paediatric doctor told us he felt humble realising that kind and generous people living hundreds of miles away worked hard to raise funds to protect them as they had been left with very little to face Covid and he was worried that he could not say “thank you” to everyone who helped.
The supplies are mainly delivered direct into the hands of those who will be using them on a daily basis so that they can reach the beneficiaries almost instantly.
I would like to thank Alexey at our Belarus office, Liudmila and her Team in Borodyanka and Tanya at Korosten in Ukraine for their help in running tirelessly to source, receive and distribute much-needed aid. Of course, nothing of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the tremendous work of everyone in the UK who supported this financially.
This is what CCLL is all about – we connect people and build bridges which span over borders, politics and uncertainty as they rest on pillars of genuine friendship, compassion and care. Thank you everyone and please thank all those who helped you!
Kind regards,
Dennis Vystavkin