1. Introduction
• Aid to the sick children of Zaporozhye region
• Help in providing supplies to the children’s hospitals
• Direct aid and educational support for the Kalinovka orphanage for the children with special needs
• Financial help to the orphanages
• Educational programs for orphans
• Field trips and excursions for orphans
• Support and expansion of the web-site deti.zp.ua
5. Development of the fund’s infrastructure
6. Thanks to the volunteers and benefactors
Dear friends!
Here is the annual report about the results of our teamwork during 2008. These results show that even small donations can change children’s lives for the better. We firmly believe that we should not rely primarily on government bureaucracy and a broken system to take care of social problems; ordinary citizens can solve many problems by themselves. The only prerequisites for helping are love and responsibility toward one’s own family and toward others.
2008 year was full of developments. As you know, when our fund organized in 2007, we were without office space, office equipment, furniture, computers, etc. All of the above fell into place in 2008. In addition, we have filled up staffing vacancies and now are able more carefully and successfully to carry out our projects.
As a result, in 2008 we obtained nearly $220,000 to help meet the needs of orphans and sick children. This sum forms the total of both donations to the fund of some $127,000 and direct donations to the sick children.
The volume of donations is important but by no means the only measure of the extent of our work. For example, some of our projects – educational programs, summer camp, etc. – are labor-intensive and quite separate from fundraising activities. You can read about our projects in the special parts of this report.
In spite of good results for the year 2008, our fund is still in the development stages. As a result, we need not only to continue our activities but also to improve organizational infrastructure and management. Our aim is to develop an honest, transparent, and professionally managed NGO (non-governmental charitable fund), one that can effectively address children’s problems in our region.
We hope that this report will help you to understand the problems we have to deal with and the ways in which we are trying to solve them.
If after reading this report you’d like to join our projects, you would be most welcome. We would also encourage your feedback. Our e-mail is detizp@mail.ru.
Main funding sources diagram on 2008
Top 50 Happy Child donors of 2008:
In the chart you can see that our fund is supported by many benefactors from Ukraine and other countries and does not depend on the donations of one major donor. During 2008 our projects were supported by 256 benefactors who donated a total of $126,830.
In spite of the current financial crisis, we hope that the inflow of funds in 2009 will remain stable, any decrease of donations from one donor being offset by increases from other sources.
We are grateful to our principal benefactors but also to every person who supported our projects last year. No gift is insignificant in the current economic downturn.
Donors allocation by countries in 2008
The diagram shows that during 2008 we depended primarily on “Ukrainian” donations. At the same time, the English version of deti.zp.ua gave us an opportunity to acquaint hundreds of foreigners with the problems of the Ukrainian children and to receive $29,000 in donations from English-speaking donors.
In 2009 the importance of foreign donations will increase because of the strengthening of the dollar and the weakening of the hryvnia. (Current exchange rate is UAH 7.84 = US $1.) Foreign support will help us cope with meeting children’s critical needs in this period.
3. MAIN EXPENSE TRACKS FOR THE YEAR 2008
4. THE FUND’S PROGRAMS AND RESULTS
Our help to severely ill children
Help for children with severe illnesses remains one of the first priorities of our fund. Almost monthly, for example, we use a portion of the contributions received from our sponsors to pay for magnetic resonance imaging. Each MRI costs $100-400. Most of the surgical, oncology, and hematology patients in the Zaporozhye Oblast Children's Hospital, we note, come from needy rural families who can hardly afford to come to a hospital. We provide such families with financial assistance to get consultations in Kiev or Moscow, or to purchase high-priced medicines, such as “Temodal,” a drug used for treating brain tumors. The fund also helps with food and transportation costs for a child undergoing long-term cancer treatment.
Another important activity of fund staff and volunteers is the publicizing of serious cases on the website.
Nastya Sizonenko with her mother
In 2008, for example, we started a support campaign for Nastya Sizonenko, a child who suffers internal hemorrhaging of esophageal veins (bleeding esophageal varices). We were able to find an appropriate clinic abroad, get a doctor's advice, make all the necessary document preparations, and gather the required fees. As a result, in February 2009 the sum of 10,000 Euros was transferred to the clinic’s account, and we expect Nastya and her mother to leave in April for Germany to undergo treatment.
Sasha Miruta with his mother
Thanks to information placed on our website, we succeeded in gathering more than $1,500 for Sasha Miruta. His brain tumor was successfully removed at the well-known Burdenko Neurosurgery Clinic in Moscow.
Inna Grishko
During 2008, through the sponsorship of Alexander from Kiev, Inna Grishko got a chance to finish chemotherapy and get a pediatric examination.
Maxim Kornyushin with his mother
Maxim Kornyushin, suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, was the recipient of significant support (more than $3000). He received several courses of treatment in Moscow, and as a result, the little guy started walking. There may be hope for full recovery.
To our great sadness, cancer sometimes takes the lives of little patients – despite all the efforts and support from our charity. We are sad to report that we couldn’t save Natasha Melnikova, Veronika Yatselenko, and Vladik Tikhonov. Some folks complained that to spend money for terminally ill children is an ineffective use of donations. In response, we would like to mention that:
- First, when we start a fundraising campaign, we give full information about the health status of each child, his or her diagnosis and medical history. The donors then decide for themselves whether or not to make a donation for that child.
- Second, in oncology, and medicine generally, there is no guarantee that treatment will succeed. But there is 100% certainty that without any help the patient is doomed.
- Third, we have encountered many cases where patients survived who had only the smallest chance for recovery (Vladik Volev, Igor Podgorniy). We do the best we can and pray for God to help us with the impossible.
- Fourth, the remaining money collected for Vladik Tikhonov was used to support another patient and to purchase equipment for the hospital ($70,100).
- Fifth, despite the death of a patient, doctors and fund members get the priceless experience that helps us save children in the future.
Providing supplies and equipment for the children’s hospitals
In our experience of working with children’s health facilities, we realized that no matter how much we might donate for a particular child, treatment makes no sense without proper equipment. In order to specify needs and costs, we created a web page on our site (www.deti.zp.ua) filled with up-to-date information on the needs of each hospital.
In 2008 our fund purchased:
- B. Braun Perfusor spray-pumps for the neonatal intensive care unit at Zaporozhye Oblast Clinical Children’s Hospital (ZOKDB) ($2703);
- 3 air conditioners for the surgery department (ZOKDB) ($1200);
- New double-pane insulated windows for three resuscitation wards (ZOKDB) ($3000);
- Bone-drill for the traumatic surgery unit (ZOKDB) ($1200);
- Sterilization device for surgery equipment (ZOKDB) ($1000);
- 2 computers for the infectious disease unit and the neonatal intensive care unit
- Pulse oximetry device for resuscitation unit (ZOKDB) ($900);
- Centrifuge OPN-3M for the laboratory (ZOKDB) ($720);
- Microscope Micros MC 10 for the laboratory (ZOKDB) ($635);
- Equipment for the ward for abandoned children (ZOKDB) (/$590);
- 2 refrigerators, model Indesit, for (ZOKDB) ($945);
- Equipped hematology department with Internet.
We plan to continue evaluating the needs of the children’s hospitals and to inform you about the most pressing requests.
Helping the Orphanage for Children with Special Needs (Kalinovka, Chernigovskiy rayon, Zaporozhye region)
It is no surprise that helping the 110 disabled children of Kalinovka Orphanage became an important goal of our fund in 2008. The living conditions and ways that these children with severe neurological, physical, and psychological handicaps have been treated over many years are not appropriate in the civilized world.
Many changes were made in 2008. Still, there remains much more on the “to do” list It should be emphasized that in this project, just as in other projects, the problems are not so much financial as organizational and systemic: the old attitudes and methods of working with disabled children with Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, among others, are simply unacceptable and must be addressed.
We highlight the following results of the Kalinovka project:
• A strong publicity campaign took place at the beginning of 2008 to bring the conditions at Kalinovka to the attention of government agencies and the public at large. As a result, the state invested more money in reconstructing buildings, purchasing medical equipment, increasing staff, hiring a doctor, reducing rate of mortality, and restoring the cemetery.
• In February 2008 two professional tutors started their work at Kalinovka, paid by the Happy Child fund. By the end of the year our fund had hired four nurses and tutors. This gave us the capability to introduce developmental exercises: children gained new skills; their physical mobility became better; they started spending more time outside.
• A sponsors’ list was formed and the following equipment purchased: two dry play pools, four heaters, a set of soft developmental toys, several wheelchairs, a gurney for moving disabled children, four air-conditioners. Also Nestle Peptamen, a special nutritional supplement, was purchased for several malnourished children. In all, during 2008 $18,400 was allocated from our fund for Kalinovka.
• We organized and paid for study trips for tutors, doctor, and director to the progressive internats for disabled children in Znamenka and “Dzherelo” in Lviv.
• In summer 2008, volunteers from the USA, Estonia, and Ukraine worked at Kalinovka.
• A special nutritional supplement program of Nestle was begun for five children with weight problems.
Many problems still remain to be solved at Kalinovka in 2009 and beyond:
• the children lack individual rehabilitation programs drawn up by experienced specialists;
• many children didn’t get individual medical examinations and do not receive proper treatment;
• dental care is very poor;
• physical therapy and therapeutic massage are lacking;
• bed-ridden patients are not taken outdoors;
• hygiene issues – absence of hot water, old out-of-repair bathroom equipment;
• lack of staff--the groupings of children must be smaller;
• largely untrained, the staff should receive some basic training;
• rooms must be adapted for special-needs children;
• there are needs for orthopedic beds, air-conditioners, some remodeling of areas to accommodate children with disabilities;
• regular visits of volunteers are a must.
A series of detailed Kalinovka reports in English may be found on our website www.deti.zp.ua
Material support to children’s homes and internats, or orphanages
Fortunately, government financing of orphanages was at a sufficiently high level in 2008 so that we saw no need to supplement governmental functions. Instead, we provided orphanages with those items always in short supply– sports equipment, stationery, board games.
For the most part, we deliver to the orphanages packages received from our American friends, K. and Amy S., among others, consisting of new clothes, shoes, stationery, books, and toys. Approximate sum of these packages in the 2008 was $5000.
At the end of 2008 we started a program of purchasing and installing outdoor ping-pong tables for the orphanages. By February 2009 we had placed nine of them. This equipment will be in use for many years and will give the children an opportunity to play together outdoors.
The outdoor ping-pong table installed in the founding home of Pologi, Zaporozhye region
Overall in 2008 we concentrated on the physical and emotional development of the children in the Zaporozhye internats. Our educational programs and sightseeing excursions served these purposes. You can read about them in the following sections.
Field Trips and excursions for the orphans
Despite the fact that the external appearances of Ukrainian internats are taking a gradual turn for the better, with the buildings decked out in plastic, eurostyle, double-glazed windows, the internal aspect of orphanage life remains substantially unchanged. As before, these are institutions in which the children have only limited contact with the outside world and association with adults; the mode of life in these “homes” reminds one of a barracks, with violence of the older toward the younger and the stronger over the weaker. In many internats children of younger years learn harmful habits and enter into adult life entirely unprepared.
Piling gifts on these children is not good, in our view, for it only compounds the problems, instilling in the kids dependence and a sense of worthlessness.
At the same time, the orphans’ participation in field trips and excursions not only acquaints the children with the beauty of the surrounding world, but also teaches them to deal with uncertainties, to find their way out of difficult situations, to work as a team, and to persistently toward preplanned goals. Sometimes a three-day trip to the Crimean Mountains can give a person greater knowledge of nature and of human relations than one entire year sitting at a desk. And the memory of such a field trip, the joy of bonding with friends, will for a long time afterward shed warmth in the heart.
In 2008, thanks to our sponsors and volunteers, we organized more excursions and field trips for orphans than in all of the preceding years put together.
The 2008 excursion year began in February when, thanks to a contribution of the company PBK Slavutich, our fund organized an excursion to Zaporozhye of 160 (!) children of the Vol’nyansk Internat (orphanage). Up to then we had never had to deal with such a mass of children. However, everything went smoothly. The children spent time at the Zaporozhye Regional Museum, visited an exhibition of exotic animals, then set out for Chortitza Island. There the kids visited the Museum of Cossack History, the complex “Zaporozhian Sich.” After that, the children went to a 3-D movie theater and ate lunch at McDonalds.
In April 2008, 30 boys and girls from Zaporozhye Internat No. 7 made an excursion to Kiev, where they had a full program organized for them thanks to Kiev volunteers.
Since April 2008, taking advantage of a gift of the Soccer Club Metallurg, the boys of internat No. 3 began to attend matches of Zaporozhye Metallurg free of charge. The fund only needed to finance the trip for the children and mentors.
On May 30, 2008, thanks to a financial contribution of the charitable fund Patriot of Zaporozhye, we organized an excursion around Chortitza Island in a cruise boat for 240 children from four Zaporozhye internats. This excursion was a wonderful gift to the children to the very last bell.
Excursion on a cruise boat around Chortitza Island, May 2008, for 240 children
In June 2008, thanks to a donation from PBK Slavutich and Inna K. from Kiev, we organized a seven-day tent fieldtrip for 38 orphans of the Vol’nyansk Internat and Internat No. 3. The children spent a week in one of the finest spots on the southern coast of Crimea. They made excursions to Yalta, Alupka, Sevastopol, Foros, and daring and strong, they carried out hike up Ai-Petrinskaya Yaila, near Yalta, more than 1,000 meters high.
Tent camp at Simeiz (Crimea) for 38 orphans
In September-October 2008 we ourselves successfully took on the expense, bought camping gear, and organized two three-day trips for children from Internat No. 3 to the Crimean mountains—one to the area of Demerdzhi Mountain and one to area Mangup-Kale. It was our first experience of a self-sponsored field trip with the orphans, and it is possible to say with confidence, that the trip succeeded. We became convinced of the usefulness and importance of such trips for the spiritual and physical development of the children.
Nice to wake up above the clouds! (Trip of 15 orphans to Demerdzhi, September 2008)
Trip of 12 orphans to the cave city Mangup-Kale (Crimea), October 2008
At the end of October 2008, a picnic was organized to Chortitza Island for the residents of children’s home Nadezhda (Hope). In December 2008, thanks to the financial and organizational help of Anna in Dnepropetrovsk, a two-day trip to Dnepropetrovsk was organized for 17 children from Nadezhda. The kids not only strolled through the city, visited museums, but also attended the Russian ice show “Dancing with the Stars.”
In November another trip to Kiev took place, this time for children from Internat No. 3 who had still not been to the capital.
Trip for 12 orphans to Kiev, November 2008
We are intending in the future to organize similar excursions and trips not only for orphans but also for children from poverty-stricken families with a large number of children and for children with special needs. And for that we need your contributions, dear readers!
From the outset of the educational program initiated by the "Happy Child" Fund in 2006, all of the students of Internat No. 3 in Zaporozhye eagerly expressed the desire to work with the teachers whom our fund invited. The teachers offered classes in drawing and sculpture, study of foreign languages, and instruction in computers. Such educational classes are very important for all children and especially for children from unhappy families and those deprived of parental care. During such lessons, the children take enjoyment from the entire instructional process, since the classes take place in a warm, friendly atmosphere. To a large extent, it is the active personal engagement of the teachers, their genuine professionalism in volunteering their work, and their love for the children that contribute to this atmosphere. Not only do they give the internat pupils, lacking normal parental attention, useful knowledge and skills: in the learning process, the teachers also broaden their pupils’ scope, form their aesthetic taste, instill self-respect and character, and in this way the children receive the education that they were unable to get from their families. But most importantly, the teachers give part of their own spirit and warmth.
Instruction in foreign language
Elena Vasilevna Zuyeva teaches language to the children. Elena Vasilevna can speak several languages and has extensive teaching experience in school; she is a talented pedagogue with a keen sensitivity to a child’s spirit. Each child is a special person to her, and she takes the view that there are no non-talented children, only that each one needs a special approach. Elena's unique instruction technique consists in giving children not only practical knowledge of a subject, but also in activating their spiritual horizon and helping them form a responsible attitude toward life, highly useful perspectives for boys and girls who didn't receive parental mentoring.
Summary of English and German instruction in the first half of 2008 – 2009
During the 2008 academic year five persons in the eighth grade of Internat No.3 participated in individual classes in English and German language with Elena Vasilevna as tutor:
1 group: Dasha Romanchenko, Ruslan Goncharenko (English);
2 group: Tatyana Krasik, Lyudmila Kovbasa (English);
3 group: Lyubov Kravez (German).
The learning process is based on the children's desire to learn certain foreign languages. Children are grouped by level, which allows the teacher to work with each child individually so that he or she sees the results of their work several times during the lesson, thereby increasing their learning satisfaction.
Instruction is given systematically in the following sequence:
- reading
- speaking (dialogue)
- speaking (monologue)
- listening
- writing
Instruction in drawing and sculpture
Last year one of our USA sponsors, Erik S., read the self-description of Anton Matvienko, a resident of Internat No. 3, in which the little boy wrote that he loves to draw and make things. Erik decided to help him develop his artistic skills, together with the entire group where Anton goes to school. As a result, the entire fourth class found the idea of learning to draw enjoyable. We invited a professional artist, Valentina Ivanovna Kolesnikova, who is also the teacher in one of regional artist-schools, to teach the class.
Valentina Ivanovna with some of her works
Valentina Ivanovna is not only a talented painter – she is a bright, cheery person with an inspiring love of life and a striving for the beautiful, whether she is working with children or grown-ups. Children try hard to please her; paintings of her students at the art institute of the Zavod district, where she teaches, more than once placed among the prize winners in exhibitions and competitions. There is every reason to hope that the efforts of the young talents from Internat No. 3 will also appear in competitions. But at present, the first efforts indicate that it is necessary to begin with practical study of the basics, the elements.
Instruction in computer literacy
The need to start a computer class at Internat No. 3 gave rise to creating the www.deti.zp.ua web-site. Lessons in computer literacy continue for students in grades 4-9. Working with the children are math and informatics teacher Olga Ivanovna (her salary is paid from the fund) and a volunteer, Natasha. (Natasha works as a programmer at the Zaporozhstal factory.) There is no position on the regular internat staff for a computer teacher.
Most of the pupils attending computer lessons regularly have mastered work with the text editor, elementary paint editor, and the presentation editor; the little-older children can make use of the Internet and e-mail. Working on the computer is quite fascinating for the children, and the practical skills, obtained in the computer group, will certainly be of use in their adult lives.
In addition to lessons within the walls of the internat, our fund, by way of experiment in 2008, underwrote instruction for three children of Internat No. 3 at the Computer Academy ShAG. The children attended classes at the academy Saturdays. Unfortunately, we were not immediately successful in choosing children willing regularly to attend and prepare for classes; and a number of difficulties also cropped up getting the children from the internat to the academy. Nevertheless, we intend to extend this program and pay for instruction for more talented children at ShAG.
In spite of demonstrable successes, our educational program is mostly focused on Internat No. 3 in Zaporozhye. We would like to extend it to other orphanages (especially in the rural areas). In order to do this we need the help of the volunteer teachers and financial support to pay for the services of professional teachers.
We are grateful for any and all donations for the educational program for the orphans. In fact, these gifts are essential, if our efforts in the bringing up and education of these children are to succeed. Funds are also needed to buy paints, paper, craft materials, reference books, dictionaries, and other educational materials.
Support and development of our website www.Deti.zp.ua
In 2008 we put a great deal of effort into turning our web-site www.deti.zp.ua into a portal about the most serious problems of Zaporozhye children.
For that purpose efforts are made constantly to update the website with current, useful information concerning children’s hospitals, internats, and charitable organizations located in our region. Also, we publish the most important articles in the public sphere related to orphans, adoptions, and foster families.
Periodically we launch publicity campaigns, placing posters and billboards around Zaporozhye with information about the neediest children, web address included. A portal advertisement was placed on the marshrutka taxis in Zaporozhye and on the passenger cars of the Zaporozhye-Kiev and Berdyansk-Moscow trains. Banner notices regularly appear on the Internet. Happy Child associates often participate on TV and radio shows, where they mention the web-site deti.zp.ua as a reliable source of information about the most serious needs of Zaporozhye children.
All of this activity has lead to a significant increase in recognition for www.deti.sp.ua and a growth in site traffic to 800-1200 visitors per day. Virtually every request for help for a child posted on our site finds a response among our readers, and generous donations of UAH 1000 or more flow into parents’ accounts for a sick child.
Mass media often publish info from our website, because they know it is checked, correct, and trustworthy.
In this way, thanks to the website, needy people, children’s hospitals, and orphanages have the opportunity to share their problems (with hundreds of concerned people from the entire Ukraine and abroad) and hope for a solution to their problems.
An important aspect of our work is support for the English version of the website. www.deti.zp.ua is one of the few regularly updated Ukrainian-English resources devoted to problems of orphans and seriously sick children. We are grateful to those volunteers who help us translate the most important articles into English and vice versa.
Support for current content, categorizing the large volume of information, and getting it up on the website is a labor-intensive process. In fact, a large part of the content is connected logically with dozens of other pages through hyperlinks. Every article on the website is characterized by keywords that link the article to several others. We have, for example, such categories as Zaporozhye Region Children’s Hospital, field trips and excursions, current activity providing for the fund. Altogether on the website there are more than sixty categories, and their number is growing.
The creation of such a system of categories and hyperlinks requires additional efforts from the website editor. On the other hand, the work is easily worth it for our readers’ ease of use.
In 2009 we plan to change the design of the website and emply a new program engine that will make access simpler for patrons. The new design will make it possible for the trusted users to add articles by themselves and for registered users to leave comments. Thus, not only the staff of Happy Child will be able to add content to the site, but also colleagues of other Zaporozhye charities and volunteer groups. The webpage of the fund “Happy Child” will be transferred to happychild.org.ua.
In order to achieve our mission, we would like to find a good designer of computer graphics, hopefully to help us on a volunteer basis with the creation of gif-banners and other graphics.
5. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FUND’S INFRASTRUCTURE
Many donors want their gifts to go immediately to the families of needy children and therefore transfer funds directly to the parents’ accounts.
Others of our donors find it difficult to decide which child is most in need at a given moment. Therefore their gift is paid into our fund’s account. Some donate for a particular fund program– field trips, education, Kalinovka orphanage, purchase of equipment for the children’s hospital, etc.
Understandably, the majority of sponsors, especially from Ukraine, want all of their donations to be steered directly to help children. This is reasonable. However, if you reflect more deeply about the work of a charitable group, the need to develop the fund’s internal organization becomes evident.
Let us take a simple example: in one month UAH 60,000 is received into the account of a charitable fund for various purposes from twenty different sponsors—for the education program, field trips for orphans, purchase of a surgical electrosuction instrument, compensation for the work of a rehab therapist. Obviously, in order for the fund properly to disburse the donations according to the wishes of the sponsors, someone must attend to a large volume of operational details. For the educational program, these might be:
• selecting good teachers for the internat (might take 1-3 weeks)
• arranging with the internat director how the classes are to be carried out
• creating a poster for the classes
• forming groups of students
• overseeing the lessons; paying the teachers’ salaries; solving routine problems
• writing up and sending out progress reports to the sponsors.
For field trips, the operational details might include:
• devising a plan for a field trip
• arranging the trip with the internat director
• creating a group order for tickets
• buying the tickets
• ordering a van to transport the children to the railroad station
• supervising the children during the trip
• preparing a report about the trip
• posting the report on the website
For the purchase of medical equipment:
• analyze proposals on the medical equipment market (what kind of equipment, where to purchase, cost)
• reach agreement with the doctors on specific model of equipment
• send out inquiries to commercial vendors
• wait for responses from all of the vendors
• choose the best offer
• carry through with payment
• wait for delivery
• answer ten letters from donors as to why the equipment has not yet been delivered
• post that same question to the delivering vendor
• finally, deliver the equipment to the hospital; write report and post it on the website
• obtain from the hospital and vendor the proper processing of the bookkeeping documents (it takes a month sometimes).
We apologize for tiring the readers with these details, but in fact this is just a small portion of the actions, without whose completion it is impossible to keep on top of the work of donations.
Clearly, it is unrealistic to drop the entire weight of this work onto the shoulders of volunteers, for a volunteer has his or her own place of work or training, is someone able to devote only several hours a week to charitable work. And usually these hours fall on weekends or evenings of workdays.
So, our organization needs regular employees on tap who are good at dealing with daily tasks. Furthermore, it is evident that there are necessary additional expenditures for transportation (for delivery of packages, trips to the hospital or to a rural internat); also connection to the Internet (it is not possible to update the website without access to the Internet, without contact with sponsors); costs to print posters and leaflets (charitable ads that more than pay for themselves by the increase in the number of donations). Naturally, all of these secondary expenses of the fund—for carrying out the fund’s tasks--should be commensurate with the monthly intake of donations.
According to Ukrainian legislation up to 20% of donations can be used to cover a fund’s overhead. Our fund’s overhead averages about 6-10%. Moreover, some of our regular sponsors cover a portion of these costs through direct personal donations. Without having sufficient infrastructure in place—qualified associates with computer and organizational skills for the office—it is simply not possible to cope with the tasks the fund was created to deal with.
For the Happy Child Fund, 2008 was a very important year from the standpoint of developing the infrastructure. Thanks to the goodwill of one of the fund’s friends, an office was put at our disposal completely free of charge, consisting of a two-room apartment near the center of the city. Up to then our staff had to work at home in their own apartments, located some distance away, with the result that some commutes took up to 30% of the working day. Further, the person providing the office paid for the city utilities and gave us the use of three office tables and computers with monitors. The factory Dneprospetsstal’ placed at our disposal a telephone-fax, and Sergei from Zaporozhye, a scanner. For our staff this yields a definite time and normal conditions for work.
At the same time, the question of office space for our fund will come up again in the not too distant future. We will need accommodations in Zaporozhye, hopefully two rooms with a total area no less than 22 square meters, located not far from city center.
Still one more unresolved problem is the lack of an automobile for the fund. The fund staff do not own their own automobiles and must usually ask one of our friends or call a taxi. Getting around to pick up donations from the increasing number of our collection boxes and also the need to make repeated trips to the hospital, to the internats, and to Kalinovka (93 miles; 150 km.) makes a service vehicle an urgent necessity. It does not need to be a new vehicle, but preferably something like a hatchback, small utility vehicle, or station wagon.
6. OUR THANKS TO DONORS AND VOLUNTEERS
We sincerely thank all who helped us in 2008, either as a volunteer or donor.
Thanks to volunteers:
Inna Fomenko — for help organizing children’s wait time in oncology-hematology; for support for Zaporozhye children on the web forum cirota.ru.
Volodya Kiyanenko: for his continual support of projects and for helping develop the fund’s structure; for help in transportation; for his wise counsel.
Nastya, Cvetlana, Juliette of OAO Dneprospetsstal: for ongoing informational, organizational, and financial support of our projects.
Yana Dereka: for help in conducting excursions for orphans; carrying out activities of the fund.
Natasha from Zaporozhstal and her husband Sergei: for providing classes in computer literacy at Internat No. 3, for help in organizing outings for orphans; for help at the children’s home at Kalinovka.
Lena D.: for help translating and contact with the German clinic.
Sveta Krylova: for organizational help for the ward of rejected children at ZOKDB; for informational support for the website.
Ksenia Morozova: for support carrying out activities; for organization of trips for the orphans.
Anya Gerashchenko from Kharkov, Mariana Voronovich from Kiev, and several other “Friends of Kalinovka”: for their huge organizational help, visits, and volunteer efforts accomplished for the disabled children at the Kalinovka facility.
Patrick Anderson from U.S.A.: for his ongoing support for our fund among U.S. citizens.
David Sudermann, James Shetler, and Andy Shenk from U.S.A.: for their support of our program at Kalinovka; for volunteer work at Kalinovka; for translating; for developing U.S. donor connections.
David Cottrell from U.S.A.: for support of our projects among U.S. citizens.
We are grateful to all 256 donors who provided support to our projects in 2008, and we publish below a report listing all contributions collected over the past year. Without your help not a single idea of ours would have become reality.
Report on contributions received in 2008
