Love & care for abandoned babies Ukraine & Moldova

ChildAid's work in Ukraine often reveals shocking accounts of lives of babies and children who may not be officially "abandoned" but are living early years where abandonment could be better for them!

Ivan, Natalya and Ira have the same father but two different mothers. The fact that they are alive today is a gift from God. Their father lived for himself. Ivan’s mother died from alcoholic hepatitis when he was a baby and he lived happily with his grandmother. His older brother lived with the father but frequently visited the grandmother as he was always hungry – he cried when he had to go back to his home but the grandmother could not take in another child.

When Grandma died Ivan had to live with his father. He can remember this as being the most horrific year. The father was regularly violent. Drunk, the parents frequently collapsed naked, and then the father’s friends beat the children and touched them all inappropriately. This sexual and violent abuse came to an end when social services took the children away.

Ira was dangerously under-weight and was found lying unconscious in a sandpit in temperatures of 40°. The parents were too drunk to even stand when the children left.

But their life of abandonment could have become even worse. It was a blessing that the children were not sent to a State orphanage but to one of ChildAid's partners. Today, all three children are safe and lovingly cared for in our family foster home. Ira has begun to speak. Natalya has learnt to read, write and count and sings very well. Ivan is making good progress at school. But, their lives could have been so much worse. Children from broken homes or who are sent to state orphanages in Ukraine are vulnerable to being exploited for human trafficking and abuse. It is reported that several state-run institutions have been allegedly complicit of being wilfully negligent in the sex and labour trafficking of children in their care.

Your support enables more children to be saved from abandonment and exploitation - and the works must go on and on, but it can only do this with support such as yours.

Thank you