Auction nets students of Lviv’s Banking Institute 43,800 hryvnias
The students of the National Bank of Ukraine’s Banking Institute in Lviv organized the charity action Auction of Hope on behalf of the pupils of the Horodok School of Social Rehabilitation, to whom they have been providing assistance for the past seven years. Students and staff members of the Banking Institute give lectures at the school, bring sweets, and provide financial aid.
The aim of the charity auction was to collect money to set up a computer class and purchase computer programs, the idea being that computer literacy will help the pupils in this specialized school have an easier time adapting to society after they leave the Horodok School of Social Rehabilitation. It will also help them quickly forget that they have had a difficult life and realize that their hard times are behind them. All the children are from underprivileged families, orphans, beggars, and street kids. Helping these children is crucial, say the students of the Banking Institute.
Everything looked very official at the auction - real lots, bankers, and businessmen, who came to the institute that day. There was also the requisite spirit that allowed the organizers to ask for 1,500 hryvnias for the t-shirt that Vasyl Virastiuk was wearing when he became the World’s Strongest Man in 2004. The starting bid for each item was 500 UAH, but the students worked the audience so well that a competition for the right to become a winning buyer started. One bidder paid 3,500 UAH for the first hryvnia printed in Ukraine, which bears the signature of today’s president and the then head of the National Bank of Ukraine.
Viktor Pynzenyk donated this hryvnia for the auction. The largest sum paid was for a briefcase belonging to Arsenii Yatseniuk, first deputy head of the Presidential Secretariat, in which he carried only good news, said the donor. The head of Lviv Bank paid 6,550 hryvnias for it. The smallest amount was paid for Volodymyr Zelensky’s trousers that he was wearing when he won “Dances with the Stars” - only 650 hryvnias.
There were also items from Bohdan Stupka (two copies of Maister (The Master) by Volodymyr Melnychenko); Olha Herasymiuk (two paintings that she removed from the wall of her own apartment); Roman Viktiuk (a stylish Kenzo shirt); Oksana Karavanska (a decoration based on her sketches) and Bohdan Kozak - two CDs with recordings of the poetry of Taras Shevchenko and Ivan Franko. Painter Oksana Lypa donated some of her ceramic works.
The most heated bidding was for two lots donated by the First Lady, Kateryna Yushchenko: autographed books and words of gratitude for the students’ support of children in difficulty.
The rector of the Banking Institute, Tamara Smovzhenko, sincerely thanked the participants of the Auction of Hope and said: “At last there will be a computer class at the Horodok specialized school!”
THE DAY‘S REFER ENCE
Heading into 2007 with one million hryvnias
Mykolaiv Oblast Hospital has received one million UAH to purchase new medical equipment and resolve other problems. The large sum of money is the result of a New Year’s charity governor’s supper that took place in the Russian Drama Theatre. The invitees also took an active part in the charity auction. One of them sold the books with autographs of President Yushchenko and his wife Kateryna, Okean Elzy’s CDs with Sviatoslav Vakarchuk’s autograph, as well as items autographed by Yurii Lutsenko and the Klitschko brothers’ boxing gloves. The total raised from the sale of the auctioned items was 75,000 UAH.
The book with the president’s signature went for 4300 hryvnias, and art albums autographed by the president’s wife — for 3,000. A ticket to the charity evening cost 10,000 hryvnias. Interestingly, the heads of several oblast state administrations decided to support their Mykolaiv colleague. Yevhen Chervonenko, Ivan Plachkov, and others, who came to Mykolaiv that day, took part in the auction.
Oleksandr Sadykov, the head of the Mykolaiv oblast state administration and the former head of the joint-stock bank Yuneks, donates his entire salary to charity, reports Vitalii SHLIAPNIKOV from Mykolaiv.
