Zaporozhye charity foundation “Happy Child” continues the implementation of an interesting but difficult project – building of the “Happy Home” for the wards of boarding schools and orphanages with various forms of pathologies. Another “Happy Home” will be built in the village of Lyubimovka, Mikhailovsky disctrict, Zaporozhye region, with the help of the Lviv Educational Fund and Ginger Fund.
A large number of orphans with special needs in Ukraine is still living in the government residential institutions for people with disabilities. The majority of foster families and adoptive parents are still not ready to accept children with disabilities and pathologies into their families. These children, however, equally deserve comfortable family-type conditions. One way to solve this problem, which is the mission of the “Happy Child” charity fund, is the building of family-type orphanages.
Habitual for the post-Soviet era way of supporting children with various forms of pathologies has long been receding in the developed countries. In its place come new family-type orphanages, where children with special needs live in comfortable family-type conditions. There, children are under ongoing rehabilitation, involved in taking care of themselves and their home.
Just a few years ago, two family-type orphanages “Happy Home 1” and “Happy Home 2” - were established by the fund on the basis of Chernigov boarding school, located in the village of Kalinovka, Chernigov district, Zaporozhye region. Approximately 20 of former boarding school students with special needs reside in these family-type orphanages at the moment. Despite the fact that these two “Happy Homes” are not families in every sense, conditions for the children there are much more favorable than in those barrack type housing units. It is really important that 5 orphans with special needs were adopted because of how open these family-type orphanages are for volunteers, including foreign ones.
“Happy Child” has received financial support from the Lviv Educational Fund and Ginger Fund to implement a new project. Another family-type orphanages will be established in the village of Lyubimovka, Mikhailovsky disctrict, Zaporozhye region. The “Happy Home” can accommodate up to 7 orphans, including children with special needs. Former Lyubimovka village hospital complex of three buildings, which was closed a few years ago, will be used to construct a DDST Lyubimovka.
Funds received from the Ginger Fund will be used to establish a first DDST in the former outpatient clinic of the hospital. There will be done repair work to reconstruct and restore the building, walls and roofs repair, as well as interior work, to create comfortable living conditions. Opening of the new “Happy Home” in Lyubimovka is expected in late 2016.
The implementation of this project will allow a few more boarding school students to escape the walls of barrack-type government institutions and live in comfortable family-type conditions. Further operation of the house can last for decades, allowing orphans with special needs to grow up in more humane conditions.
