ABOUT THE UKRAINE MISSION

In Ukraine, alcohol and drug addiction, and accompanying child neglect and abuse, is a very serious problem. Social Services involvement is minimal. In 1999, Harvest City Church began partnering with a new work to rescue and help children – Father’s House, a Christian home for children. Since then, several members of our congregation have traveled to Kiev to participate in the work with children.

FATHERS HOUSE is a large Christian home in a village an hour’s drive from Kiev and was opened in 2000. The children receive love and care at every level – physical, emotional and spiritual. Around 65 children live there at any one time. They are big groups at around 8 children but it gives the children an opportunity to see how a family functions and prepare them to hopefully be adopted. Children are able to live at Father’s House till they are mature enough to live separately and there is a mentoring apartment for young people to learn life skills. Father’s House has a church for children, “Heavenly Father’s House church” and is also attended by some of the village people.

We also partner with the CHILD RESCUE MOBILE UNIT, the only one of its kind in Ukraine. The Unit responds to calls reporting abuse and neglect of children 24/7. There is a team of Ukrainian Christian psychologists and social workers and headed up by Vera, a lawyer. If a child is in a dangerous situation, Police will back up the team and remove the child. In other situations, the children may be removed for a time (often to a medical facility if a child is in poor health) and the parents required to undergo rehabilitation. The conditions in the homes are very often extremely bad. Clothing, medical supplies and food many times are brought by the Unit team.

When children remain in, or are returned to, their homes, the team continues to make home visits. In 2017 alone, 193 families were on the Unit’s case books receiving visits, equating to 364 children who would otherwise receive no help at all if it wasn’t for the Unit. 43 children were placed in Christian centres. Also in 2017, 130 children from these crisis families were able to go to summer camps.

May 2020 Update

A man named Fedor in Ukraine who is a connection of ours has made a video to help promote Father's House. Fedor is well known in Ukraine for his filming  (has won awards) and has a big heart for FH. The video shows the children working in the greenhouses Father's House has (bought with some money given to us years ago for work projects to provide skills and income) and also has Roma telling children the fig tree story. It is just 3 minutes long but our son David made it into a YouTube to make it easy to send. The greenhouses are really a blessing and bring in some income to FH plus crops to feed the children in their care. There is a man who oversees the project and the children help. Father's House has gone from their usual around 65 children to currently 93 (one reason being government orphanages just before the country went into quarantine returned a lot of children to the places they came from - awful living situations - and FH took in some of these children. This, plus reduction in donations, has put a lot of stress on FH but praise God they are holding fairly steady (Bruce just had a Zoom meeting - he is Chairman of the FH board). Apart from the family group parents living at FH, there are small teams of workers doing 12 days at a time living there to help with and entertain the kids. 

Nearly all of the  rest of the staff, other than Roma, are not going into FH at present. But FH has no cases and they are sterilizing everything repeatedly.  

We are SO grateful to Harvest City and all your encouragement and support! Hoping to see you all again in the not too distant future - when we don't have to quarantine 14 days to visit!  Enjoy the video! Our website is www.ukrainechildrescue.org if you want to read more on what we are doing to help kids in Ukraine.