Friends of the children of Chernobyl

Corofin - North Galway Branch

Idea, aims, resources:

FOTCC provides a month-long summer holiday in Ireland for children from Belarus. Irish families act as hosts on a voluntary basis. This short time spent in a healthy environment will boost the immune systems of the children to help prevent life-threatening diseases. We provide corrective surgery, dental repair, eyeglasses, lots of good food, clean air and a loving environment.

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 prople asking for help. The film is now available to be used by allgroups in their fundraising efforts. We hope you will get to see it and recognise how vitally important all groups fundraising is to our work.

Corofin Branch

Killarney Branch

Rathmore Branch

Cloughjordan Branch

Strokestown Branch

Sligo Branch

Moore & Roscommon Branch