ODESSA ORPHANAGE PROJECT

In October, 1999, the first cross cultural project team, sponsored by UAC Ukraine, visited orphanages in Odessa.  These were huge institutions housing hundreds of homeless children (11,000 in Odessa alone).  Caregivers, psychologists, teachers and medical personal struggled to deal with severe shortages of food, medical supplies, education, residual problems from Chernobyl, and a depressed economy that could no longer support them leaving little hope for a future.  Seeing the deprivation children lived with daily prompted a vision to develop ways that could help support the caregivers and to offer hope for these children who ask for nothing and need so much.  That vision became a realty with the formation of the New Hope for Children Branch of Cross Cultural International Institute (CCII).

Hope...