"Happy Child” charitable foundation has been helping children in need in Zaporozhye region for several years. Granting help to these children is possible only due to people who care and donate their money, time and hearts. Thanks to your contribution, a lot of seriously ill children get possibilities to undergo treatment; many orphans can develop and discover the world beyond the walls of their boarding schools. But to provide you with information about children in need on our web site, our team also needs support.
What you see on the foundation site nowadays is the result of hard work of a lot of people. To place only one request to help a sick child we need to do at minimum the following: to contact the relatives and to explain the process; to meet them and to talk to them (it happens a mother is able to say only several words during a one-hour long interview because she is constantly crying); to look through the documents; to check whether the accounts are suitable; to contact the doctor in order to specify the situation. For some children, we need to find a new hospital, to obtain the bill etc. We need to scan and process the child’s documents and photographs. We also need to write a request for help and write it in a way that people would become filled with the problem and desire to help. Later these materials need to be placed on the foundation site. The same relates to any project whether it is an excursion program for orphans or fund raising for medical equipment. A large scope of work precedes appearance of any kind of information on the site and conduction of any activity.
About 5 or 6 years ago we used to do everything during our leisure time on our personal computers at home. But at the time we had only several children to take care of and only one supported boarding school. Devoting to this work only 1 or 2 hours a day we could not expect more. But the situation demanded more! We couldn’t afford buying medicine for one child in a ward leaving another one to die without medicine on the adjacent bed. It was not correct to help those who needed 5,000 hryvnyas (620 US dollars) and to abandon to die those who needed 50,000 euros (64,312 US dollars). We wanted do to more and to help to a greater number of children. But greater scopes of work needed greater funds. We needed more time, more people and better conditions. For the SYSTEM to work it is not enough to have simply a group of crazy enthusiasts. For systematic and effective work we need professionals devoting 8 hours a day to the activities. Besides, this requires suitable conditions, consumables and lots of other things.
We have managed to create a system of help for children in need in the Zaporozhye region. The system is far from perfect but anyway working. However, the system cannot work driven by bare enthusiasm. For us to help children effectively we need your help!
We are trying to minimize expenses for the office keeping. In accordance with the law, we have the right to use some certain percent of the received funds for the administrative needs but we are trying not to do this. Luckily, we have several constant donors who finance a part of the organizational expenses. At the same time, “Happy Child” foundation is in the constant need of the following:
- Office rent – 3000 hryvnyas ( around 372 US dollars) a month For more than 3 years, a one-bedroom flat of one of our volunteers served us as an office. There, we paid only for the building services. At present, the office has to move. Our new office is a three-bedroom flat on the ground floor of a block of flats in the city center. Yes, it would have been much cheaper to rent a one-bedroom flat on the fifth floor in the suburbs but the large area and location in the center matter fundamentally. 5 or 6 persons with constantly ringing phones and visitors who keep coming all the time do not interfere with one another’s work. And the visitors do not have to stay by the entrance waiting for a free place inside the office to come in. At present we have an opportunity to bring together all the key staff and volunteers for more effective work coordination. And simply not tripping over boxes with booklets, tourist equipment etc is very important for the effective work of the foundation. The ground floor matters, too, because it is often difficult for our clients to walk up the stairs, and elevators sometimes are out of order. As for the location in the center, it saves a lot of time, and time is money as all of you know.
- Payment for the phone bills. We have to make a LOT of calls (to doctors, parents of sick children, different companies, volunteers, donors etc). That is why we will be grateful if you help us to pay the foundation phone bills. You can transfer money directly to the phone accounts by the following numbers: +38 050 452 03 92 and +38 098 387 47 13.
- Payment for the office and the out-workers’ Internet”– 180 hryvnyas (22 US dollars) a month. I think this line needs no explanations because the main foundation activities are conducted via the Internet and will become impossible without it. Besides, we have very effective persons among our staff who are not very mobile and their daily trip to the office will cost much more than payment for their home access to the Internet.
- Payment of the staff transport fares, delivery of parcels, trips to Kalinovka etc - 300-1000 hryvnyas (37-123 US dollars) a month. Our staff has to travel around the city a lot; often carrying volumetric or hard loads, for this car transportation is needed. Besides, much petrol “is eaten” by trips to Kalinovka; anyway if we stop visiting the place regularly, there will be no process in the activities.
- At present, the foundation is in a great need of a laser multifunctional device (printer/scanner/copy machine). Without such a device the foundation is completely helpless because we have to print copy and scan A LOT!
- We still need two more computers in the office. At present we sometimes come to the situation when our volunteers work on the computer in turns, which wastes time and decreases the work productiveness. We will gratefully accept used computers with operating memory of 1 GB and other corresponding parameters.
- We need office desks and chairs (in part of chairs we feel like orphans at present and the situation resembles a game from the childhood in which, for example, 5 children try to occupy 4 chairs).
- We need support to pay for the foundation advertisements. Usually we are given places for our advertisements for free but publishing of posters, flyers, booklets and leaflets requires money. Effectiveness of such advertising is significantly high but, unfortunately, it is accompanied by overhead charges. Also, we sometimes have to pay for the banner advertising in the Internet.
- We will also be grateful for consumables used in the foundation activities: white printing paper, envelopes of euro format, and stamps for internal Ukrainian mail (sometimes we spend as much as 400 hryvnyas (50 US dollars) a month for envelopes)!
- Our foundation is dreaming about photo and video cameras of high quality. At present we use our own cheap cameras and due to this, obtained materials lack a lot. Without microphones, recordings leave much to be desired. Actually, the video camera itself leaves much to be desired. That is why we dream to obtain qualitative video and photo cameras allowing for bright visual materials of high quality. A good reflex camera (Cannon 550 class) costs a lot but it combines perfect photo and video functions and is able to satisfy our needs in photo and video cameras for a long time.
We understand that the majority of donors want their donations to serve some particular children or particular needs. We, too, want to grant help to the greatest possible number of children. That is why we are asking you: please, help us to help!
If you want to support us, use the following contacts:
info@deti.zp.ua
mobiles:+3 8 050 452 03 92
+3 8 098 387 47 13
the city number:+3 8 061 701 57 57
