I decided to write a brief biography so as not to constantly answer the same questions.
I was born on October 12, 1979 in the center of Zaporozhye. As a child, I dreamed of becoming a traveler, sailor or some kind of scientist. He loved to play football. At the age of 13, I became acquainted with programming and became interested in this topic. As a result, he entered the Zaporozhye State Engineering Academy and received a degree in programming.
I liked studying at the academy, it was the period of the advent of the Internet, and that’s all? those who studied in my specialty were fans of programming. At the same time, in my 4th-5th year I became very interested in various philosophical movements, serious literature, and films with an enhanced semantic load. I wondered about the meaning of life and the choice of life path. At that moment, I realized that simply “becoming a cool programmer” was not a sufficiently motivating life goal for me. I was going through a certain period of depression, from which I found a way out by trying to help other people who were in difficult situations.
In my last year at the academy, I worked part-time as a computer designer and video editor for TV, but in the fall of 2001 it turned out that I was being drafted into the Ukrainian army. In those days, few people went to serve after graduating from university. In principle, I was not eager to go there, but I was even less willing to give bribes to someone and make excuses. In addition, it was interesting to go through this “school of life” from my own experience.
The army made a great impression on me. Its absurdity, and the wealth of observed characters. Basically, it sucked, to put it briefly. I realized that thoughtless submission to superiors, especially if the superiors give stupid orders, is not for me. At the same time, I was able to better understand the average human nature, selfishness, and witnessed the transformation of generally normal people into a mindless herd. In the army, I became interested in religion for some time, visited Orthodox and Protestant churches, but was never able to become a member of any of the churches, since my mind did not allow me to accept all church dogmas. In the army I became acquainted with the late works of Leo Tolstoy and his understanding of religion. In principle, I agreed with most of his principles.
After returning from the army in 2002, I felt a huge surge of energy and a desire to “turn the world upside down.” I wanted to help those in need, live as modestly as possible, not eat meat and create an ideal family. In 2003, I joined a program to help orphans, which was organized by one of the Zaporozhye churches. I was not a member of the church, but the works that these believers did were very close to me. While working at a metallurgical enterprise as an administrator/programmer, in the evenings I worked part-time as a computer network teacher at the Step Academy. My first wife Lyuda and I spent every weekend with orphans, took them on nature excursions, and invited them to visit us at home.
In 2004, I realized that too many orphans wanted to visit us and work or play on the computer. I decided to organize a computer class in boarding school No. 3 in Zaporozhye. To collect the necessary resources, in 2004 I created the website deti.zp.ua. To my surprise, after a couple of months, with the help of the site, I was able to find several donors, including from abroad, who paid for the purchase of not only computers, but also bicycles and various other gifts for orphans. There was an opportunity to help not only boarding school No. 3, but also other boarding schools. We also began collecting donations for interesting excursions for orphans, trips to the sea and to other cities.
In 2004, my daughter Masha was born. She spent the first month of her life in the hospital, and my wife and I had strong feelings about this. I remember then I decided that I would definitely help another orphan child by accepting him into the family. Masha recovered. In the summer of 2005, my wife and I obtained custody of a 12-year-old boy from a boarding school. In the spring of 2006, he was diagnosed with cancer - stage 4 lymphogranulomatosis. After a difficult operation, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and a year of treatment, fortunately, remission occurred.
Having cancer in an adopted child, in addition to rethinking life, introduced me to the problems of other children with cancer. I saw that many Ukrainian children were dying not because it was impossible to cure cancer, but because of a lack of money and equipment in hospitals.
I decided to direct all the efforts of the site deti.zp.ua to help not only orphans, but also children with cancer and children with serious illnesses. I quit my job and devoted myself entirely to creating the Happy Child Foundation. All this became possible thanks to the volunteers who joined the project. This is a large number of energetic and kind people. They are all wonderful, but I would like to especially mention Irina Gavrisheva, who herself was a patient of oncohematology as a child. She gave a huge impetus to the development of the foundation, and her book “Escape from Death” pushed many people to charity. Unfortunately, Ira died in the winter of 2016.
A separate area of the fund was helping orphans with severe disabilities. First visit in 2007, a boarding school for such children in Kalinovka shocked me. On average, 10-20 children died there every year. We tried to change the situation and purchased special food for the children. Finally, we created two small “Happy Homes” at the boarding school in Kalinovka, where orphans with disabilities were able to live in small groups (up to 9 people) in conditions close to family ones.
Another project was “Klubok” - organizing mountain hikes, excursions, tent camps for orphans and not only for them. This is the direction that charged me with energy. We have organized dozens of mountain hikes in the Crimea and the Carpathians, about 10 tent camps, and many excursion trips to Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkov and other cities.
The "Children's Eco-Village" project consisted of creating an eco-village for foster families. In the villages of Ukrainka and Lyubimovka, we built 3 houses for orphans and young people with disabilities. My family and 8 adopted children lived in one of the houses. We slowly developed agriculture, planted hundreds of trees, and created unusual objects - the lighthouse hill and the Moomin House. We gradually acquired old rural houses and converted them into supported housing for people with disabilities. There were many plans... but they were all stopped by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the beginning of March 2022, the eco-village was captured by invaders. My family and another foster family temporarily moved abroad. Russian soldiers lived in our houses, destroyed and plundered what had been created for many years, and broke young trees. In July 2023, both houses were destroyed by explosions.
Now (October 2023) my family has returned to Ukraine, we will live near Kiev, in Brovary, in our temporary home. We don’t know whether it will be possible to continue the “Children’s Eco-Village” project, but we continue to help children and adults who find themselves in difficult situations due to war or illness. The Happy Child Foundation continues to operate in Zaporozhye, and I am making efforts to develop the subsidiary project Helpus, which is focused on creating supported living homes for adults with disabilities, and also helps seriously ill adults and psychoneurological institutions.
As I got older, I gained a lot of experience in a variety of projects. I experienced the joy of achievements and the bitterness of mistakes and losses. I lived in Germany for almost a year and a half and saw the advantages and disadvantages of living in Europe. I continue to believe that people can solve most problems by living more modestly and sharing some of their resources with those in need, or by investing resources in the most important areas - science, education, medicine, security.
I also believe that it is the voluntary participation of people in understandable and honest charitable projects that makes not only the recipients of help happier, but also the donors themselves.
I am always glad to receive your feedback and am open to communication.
email: albert@deti.zp.ua, Phone: +38 066 513 34 35 (whatsapp, viber, telegram)
