Visiting Street Children On The Street

If you had children living under your home or apartment building, would you know it? This was the question I asked myself as I stood on the sidewalk last night waiting for our team. They had gone in a small opening under an apartment building and were seeing where street children live.

As I waited, loaded down with bags and backpacks, I watched a typical Ukrainian evening unfolding around me. A couple passed with a baby in a stroller and stopped to talk to a friend, a woman came home from the store pulling a toddler on a sled, and an older lady, wearing her robe, stepped into the garden to throw a bottle at a couple of fighting cats. Dinner smells came wafting out of the window above me. Everything seemed normal, but I knew that alongside this normal picture of life, there were street children living among these people right under their own homes.

When our team crawled out of the hole, a woman passing by stopped and stared in shock. The sight of six Americans crawling out of a hole under her apartment building was just too much for her and she began to question us and ask us what we were doing. We told her that we help street children and that were visiting the place where they live.

In total shock, she kept telling us over and over, "There are no children that live under this apartment building. I have lived here thirty five years and I have never seen a child that lives there. That is not possible. I don't believe it. How could children live on the streets?" We kept explaining to her that it is possible and children do live on the streets of Kiev. I told her we are Christians and want to help these children, I explained that some children don't have family to take care of them and have nowhere to go. She would not listen to anything we said to her. We were seriously challenging her view of the world.

She continued to talk and kept asking questions without even waiting for us to answer. A man approached us and wanted to know what was going on and then she started demanding to see our documents. (You are no one in Ukraine without your legal documents which tells people who you are, where you live and what you are allowed to do.) The atmosphere was now getting a little more tense. I felt that perhaps we needed to let her wind down a bit. If her mood changed towards us and got more aggressive, she might call the police and then who knows what would happen next.

Zhenya, a worker from the day care center, then called the director of the center and asked her to bring over their documents showing that the day care center was indeed registered with the government and was allowed to work with street children. David called a director of the ministry and when they saw that we were connected with people, the mood changed and we left.

As we walked away, I heard the woman still talking and saying the same thing over and over to the man, "There are no children who live on the street here. I would know it if there were children who lived under this apartment. How could children live on the streets? I've been living here thirty five years and I have never seen children living under my apartment building. There are no children who live under my apartment building."

(The photo shows Cindy with a boy who regularly visits ChildRescue's day care center for street children. Note that the center which feeds about fifteen to twenty children a day is a three minute walk from the apartment building in this story.)

Visiting The Rehabilitation Center

The rehabilitation center feels like the "hub" of ChildRescue and this is where children live while the ministry does research on their family histories, health and individual needs. Some go to school on site and others are enrolled in a local public school. This center has children of all ages. They are VERY active and love meeting new people.

In addition to remodeling the center's large recreation room, our team is spending time getting to know the children who live there. The kids are always ready to challenge any new person they meet to a serious game of ping pong.

Remodeling in Ukraine

The rehabilitation center is where about twenty to twenty five children live as their needs are assessed by ChildRescue. With the constant wear and tear, it occasionally needs what we call in Ukraine "remont" work. "Remont" is a Russian word that can be roughly translated as remodeling, but also includes the idea of "restoring" or "repairing" Think of it as the idea of keeping everything from falling apart!

Our team is doing plaster repair on the walls and will then paint the walls and ceiling. This photo shows Bradly using his plastering skills!

Visiting the Government Shelter

Here's Adam with a new friend he met at the government "lock down" shelter.

When street children are picked up off the streets, they are taken to a shelter where they can be kept for up to ninety days while the government decides where they should belong. If parents are not willing or able to take responsibility for their child or they cannot find their parents, the child usually placed into the orphanage system.

The red spots on the child's face is like an antiseptic "band aid" solution to cover up and protect sores.

CrossRoads Foundation Welcomes Mission Team From Harvard University

This past week a group from Harvard University's Reformed University Fellowship arrived in Kyiv to spend a week to learn more about ChildRescue, meet the children and staff and help remodel the rehabilitation center.

This photo was taken at the medical center where visitors must put on white capes. (to ward off germs!)

Afterwards, we took them to the rehabilitation center to introduce them to the children who live there and see what they will be remodeling.

These centers are located all over the city and the team got a real taste of Kyivian life learning how challenging it is moving around the city in heavy traffic!

In the evening, we shared pizza with the four teenagers who have just started living in the independent living center for girls. This center opened only two weeks ago so it was fun to share their excitement. This is a big step in their lives as they will be able to experience what it is like living in an apartment and be able to start learning life skills to prepare them for life on their own.

We got to know them better over dinner and saw their new rooms which are decorated with stuffed animals and photos. They are already adjusting to their new life and begging their caretakers for a dog!