Chernobyl Children’s Project International
While many people are familiar with the medical consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, many may not realize the social, economic and psychological problems still persist in affected communities in Ukraine and Belarus.
For almost 20 years, Chernobyl Children’s Project International has been at the forefront of developing programs to address these challenging long-term issues in Chernobyl communities.
For example:
- In the most poverty stricken regions of Belarus, CCPI builds community centers that serve a wide variety of unmet socials needs: Day care for working parents, therapeutic services for disabled children, child care classes, after-school and homework help, computer centers and more.
- CCPI sends volunteer nurses, dentists, surgeons and physical/occupational/language therapists to work directly with children in understaffed institutions and provides much-needed training to their local counterparts.
- CCPI provides at home and hospice care for seriously disabled and ill children. The CCPI program in Minsk, Belarus takes disabled children off the waiting list and provides families with the services they need to care for their children at home.
- CCPI’s Homes of Hope program takes children out of orphanages and places them in loving homes.
- CCPI is pioneering programs that support the rights of disabled children and adults in Belarus. Two years ago, CCPI established the country’s first independent living program for mentally and physically disabled young adults. These young people would otherwise have been committed to an institution where they would remain segregated from society until death.
- CCPI is connecting mental health care professionals in Belarus with their counterparts in the USA and Ireland to continue to develop and duplicate these programs so that more people with disabilities can live independent, fulfilling lives.
Tragedies like the recent earthquake in Haiti, the Southeast Asia tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina are sobering reminders that after the media attention inevitably turns away, difficult problems can remain that require persistent, creative solutions. We seek partners in our work, as donors, advocates, or volunteers. To learn more, visit us at Chernobyl Children’s Project International, our Channel on YouTube, or send us an email.
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