September 2, 2016

Philadelphia’s UUARC assists war-affected children

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Vira Prinko

Children from the Donetsk Oblast are seen in Kyiv after a two-week camping trip to the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains funded by the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee.

KYIV – Some 200 war-affected children living in the frontline cities of the Donbas were treated to a two-week trauma-relief trip to the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in July-August by the Philadelphia-based United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, one of America’s oldest charitable institutions that assists Ukrainians worldwide.

This is the second consecutive year that the UUARC has organized the camping trip for war-traumatized children from Ukraine’s east, marking the organization’s response to the country’s latest needs.

One hundred children each came from the easternmost oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk to get a respite from the everyday dangers of war. Children in those cities are exposed daily to artillery and mortar shelling, sporadic gunfire and deadly mines that litter the surrounding landscape.

At a cost of $25,000, the UAARC sent them on tours to Kyiv and Lviv as well as the Ivano-Frankivsk region, where they stayed at the Opillia campsite not far from the district capital of Rohatyn.

The front line cities from which the children hailed included Shchastia, Tryokhizbenka and Krymske, all in the Luhansk Oblast, and Avdiyivka and villages and towns located in the Yasynuvatsky district of Donetsk Oblast.

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