The Global Fund For Children

Graduates Giving Back in the Ukraine

• By The Global Fund for Children on October 16th, 2011
• Region: Europe and Eurasia, Featured, Success Stories

Grantee Partner
Kiev Children and Youth Support Center

Location
Kiev, Ukraine

What if every person who worked for justice in the world inspired ten others to do the same?

Bogdan Bashtovy has far exceeded this ratio as director of the Kiev Children and Youth Support Center, which supports residents and graduates of area orphanages. Bashtovy first witnessed the need for a support center when he began volunteering at Orphanage 12 in Kyiv. Much like other orphanages across the former Soviet Union, residents of Orphanage 12 “graduate” as teenagers, and often find themselves unprepared to live on their own.

“The children had to leave at the age of 16 with a very substandard level of education and absolutely no life skills,” he says. “Many children ended up on the streets, in prostitution, or involved in crime.”

In response to the graduates’ struggles, Bashtovy and his colleagues organized a meeting with orphans who had left Orphanage 12. He asked whether the graduates wanted a support center, and if they would help operate it. The orphans wholeheartedly agreed.

“Every step we have made since then, and every decision we have made—we made it with orphanage graduates,” Bashtovy says.

The center helps residents and graduates find safe housing, employment, financial support, life skills training, and vocational training. The Global Fund for Children supports the Crisis Intervention Program, which is designed to help graduates who are in immediate danger. Unfortunately common are instances of unlawful arrest by police, eviction, death of relatives, or unexpected hospitalization.

Like most of the work at the center, the crisis program is run by orphanage graduates and is focused on youth empowerment. While the services provided to orphans are an important part of the program, it is Bashtovy’s inspirational spirit and commitment to bringing orphans into the center’s management that makes the center a sustainable success.

Alyosha, a graduate of Orphanage 12, helps to run the crisis program. The center helped him enroll in a trade school, repair his old apartment, and find his first job. Now Alyosha helps orphans with similar problems.

“I know exactly how they feel and what they are going through,” he says of the orphans. “It helps me find the right approach to solving their problems.”

Photograph © Kiev Children and Youth Support Center