Corofin - North Galway Branch

24 members of the Friends of the children of Belarus have just returned from Belarus after completing a large school renovation project in Luninets. On 25th March 7 members went ahead of the remaining 17 members to prepare for the project and source all the materials.The remaining 17 traveled on 29th March. The group worked on the total renovation of the toilet facilities in a school in Luninets which has 1,140 students and 104 teachers. This included 41 toilets, 30 sinks, Cubicles, tiling, plastering, new sewer lines, etc, etc.
Lots of good work was done while interacting with the staff & locals. The group stayed in a local boarding school which was closed for mid term break. The job was completed on Friday evening after long days and lots of effort by all the volunteers. On Thursday the new members of the group went to the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl, where they met the famlies and seen their very poor conditions.

During the week some members visitied famlies, other schools, day care centres, social institutes, etc with help and planning future projects & help. 2 schools were selected for next Easter. These are in need of help with one of them having no toilet facilities. On Saturday morning some members along with an interperter visited some of the families whose children came to Ireland in July 2007 and 2008. This was a great experience for all.

The members would like to thank all who made the trip possible - through cash donations, food donations, car washes, etc, etc. They would also like to thank Aer Arann and Bolavia Airlines for their help and not charging for all our excess luggage.

Click on above picture to see Video & Pictures of the trip

The children of Clonberne National School help The children in Schools in Belarus. On the return from Belarus of 6 local volunteers with The Friends of the Children of Belarus a cheque for ?600.00 was presented by the schoolchildren to help their work. This money was gathered by the children from their pocket money. The volunteers visited the school and showed a slideshow of their work in schools in Belarus. There was a very interesting questions & answers session after the slideshow.
The Friends of the Children of Chernobyl would like to thank the children and their teachers for all their help.

a Monster Auction was held in Corrandulla Parish Hall on 27th May 2007.
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Idea, aims, resources:

The worlds worst man-made disaster, the nuclear accident at Reactor No 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, occurred on 26 th April 1986. The area that suffered most from the nuclear fallout was what is now known as Belarus. 70% of the radioactive contamination from the accident fell to earth in this area and will remain present for hundreds of years

TheFriends of the Children of Chernobyl was founded in 1994 to help children and their families whose lives have been affected by the nuclear disaster. It is an Irish registered charity with branches in many parts of the country. One of the main activities is annually providing children from the contaminated area of Belarus with a month long holiday in Ireland during July. Groups also support schools in Belarus. In the past twelve years approximately 4,000 children from contaminated areas of Belarus have been brought to Ireland to improve their immune systems. During the past few years we have seen a change of direction in the way we are working, while our children's holiday programme is still vitally important we are funding more and more projects where we have been asked for help over in Belarus and as a result our invalid programme is progressing at a rapid rate. We are supporting a children's invalid centre in Luninets and have just seen the new laundry installed which will provide them with a small income to buy materials for their craftwork. They send some of this craftwork to Ireland for us to sell for them. In the adjoining district of Pinsk there is a Half-way House for children who come from very disadvantaged backgrounds with drunk and abusive parents - this is a very different story from supporting invalid children as these children are only in residence for six months before either moving on back to their parents, who have meanwhile been rehabilitated, or being adopted as "social orphans" or going to an orphanage. Many of our groups have contributed to financially supporting the centre and we are very pleased with progress so far. Funds from our groups are supporting fifty invalid children and young people in their homes, with projects that include house renovations, house purchase, wheelchairs, nursing care, pampers, visits to the rehabilitation centres and many other supports. This aspect of our work is growing every year and more of our resources are being spent in this way. This year we brought wheelchair bound children to Ireland again and have a programme set up to bring many more in the years ahead. Recently the Cloughjordan group have finished a documentary on many of the orphans that are being supported by us, of course there are many more deserving families than the film has time to show and every time we travel over we find more and more people asking for help. The film is now available to be used by all groups in their fundraising efforts. We hope you will get to see it and recognise how vitally important all groups fundraising is to our work.

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