Ukraine Serving
Student Success Course- Kiev, Ukraine
Our work in Kiev, Ukraine is focusing on providing teenagers with the necessary guidance needed in order to find a career path and be able to be successful in school. This program is taught at a local private school on a weekly basis and is benefit the teenagers as they prepare to move forward with their secondary education in university as well as finding potential careers in the future.
Roma Camp- Transcarpathia, Ukraine
In Transcarpathia, there lies the biggest Roma camp in Ukraine. Home to 6000 people, many of these inhabitants suffer with daily basic necessities. Children go to school for the free breakfast from the Maltese Aid Service, and many girls even stop going to school due to early pregnancy. Although separated from most of Ukraine, there seems to be a caste system between the rich and the poor where the rich will treat the poor inhabitants with disdain and marriages are comprised between families with similar levels of income.
The local clinic has no visitor or patients simply due to the lack of trust in vaccinations and doctors. These inhabitants simply prefer traditional healers. There are also nothing but potholes in the mud, crossed by carts and very rarely by old Soviet cars. There is electricity but the water comes from standpipes. In the camps, local Romas do not possess any property rights for the huts they live in.
Our local staff coordinate with local organizations and visit the camp on a regular basis to host a youth camp for the children, providing children with activities to play as well as providing meals for the children.
Works Cited
Polischuk, Nikolay. “Stay Where There Are Songs: How Thousands of Roma People Survive in Transcarpathia.” Bird In Flight, 12 May 2016, https://birdinflight.com/reportage/20160512-roma-people-transcarpathia.html