This was announced by the President's wife Olena Zelenska at the presentation of the "Childhood Address" project, Ukrinform correspondent reports.
“We want to provide housing to everyone who has lost it. So far, 80 large foster families have lost their homes. We are currently building 14 and are trying to get most of them ready this year. But there are still 66. Therefore, in the future, we want to develop the project, find financing for other constructions, we want to cover not only large foster families, but also ordinary foster families (where up to five children are raised - ed.), but these should be other projects ", - noted the first lady.
She informed that the houses will have autonomous energy supply, they will be one-story, because many such families raise children with disabilities: "We don't want the family to be separated even by floors."
According to Zelenska, each such building will have a separate bomb shelter.
Ukrainian technologies and materials are used during construction, the President's wife emphasized.
Zelenska stressed that each family for which a house is being built was "acquainted in stages", and assured that even after the completion of construction, these families will not leave, because they have many needs.
The first lady emphasized: it is important that children have a childhood and that childhood has an address.
At the same time, she reminded that the Elena Zelenska Foundation works only with foreign donors. Among the areas of work is humanitarian aid to family-type orphanages, which are provided with everything they need: from clothes to laptops. It has already been possible to help every fourth adoptive family in Ukraine, the First Lady noted.
In her turn, the director of the Foundation, Nina Gorbachova, said that all materials used during construction are ecological. The area of the house with a terrace will be 285 square meters, it will have six bedrooms, five bathrooms, one of which is en-suite, the rooms will have warm floors.
At the same time, the shelter is a modular structure for 12 people, which will be installed underground, and wheelchair access will be provided there.
"We immediately decided at the Foundation that the first families who will receive these houses will be families from the front-line areas - from Luhansk region, Donetsk region, Kharkiv region, Kherson region, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk region. We know everything about them. These families were forced to leave under shelling, sometimes they only took documents with them," Gorbachova said.
She noted that in eight regions - Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia and Volhynia - suitable plots have been found and construction has already begun. The houses will belong to the community, and the family will live there as long as there is an extended foster family.
The project presentation was attended by heads of relevant ministries, public organizations, partners, as well as heads of military regional administrations where construction began, including Kharkiv, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy, and Volhynia.
The first lady's team informed that there are 1,310 large foster families in Ukraine, which raise from 5 to 10 orphans and children deprived of parental care. During the full-scale war, at least 80 such families were left without a home - they left for safer regions, but still do not have a permanent place of residence.
One of the first to receive a new home is the family of Alla and Oleksandr Yaroslavtsev from the Zaporizhzhia region. Their home in Mykhailivka was completely destroyed. Parents with eleven children are currently renting housing in Boryspil, Kyiv region. The plot for the construction of a new house is located in the village. Revne near Boryspil.
The "Childhood Address" project is implemented exclusively at the expense of international donors. It was possible to attract 5.5 million dollars for the construction of the first 14 houses. The project was supported by the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Estonia (Estonian Center for International Development Cooperation, ESTDEV), as well as the Australian Minderoo Foundation.
The Ukrainian holding sawmill company (CLT-Result), ROCKWOOL Ukraine and the charity organization Global Empowerment Mission (Gem) became partners in the construction of the "Childhood Address" pilot project in Ukraine.
As reported, in 2023 the Olena Zelenska Foundation launched the "Childhood Address" project - a project to build housing for large foster families, the so-called DBST. Social housing built within the project is transferred to the balance of the community. Families will be able to live in it for the duration of the existence of a large foster family.
