UCARE does most of its work in Ukraine, so we need to have staff and volunteers there as well. We work closely with "Priyateli Ditey" (Help Us Help the Children of Ukraine), and they have very kindly given us space within their offices in the "Presa Ukraina" building. UCARE has two part-time employees, our Ukraine coordinator and accountant, and the PD staff help us on many of our projects.
We also have a dedicated cadre of volunteers. Many of them are orphans who have finished their educations with UCARE's help, or have attended camps with us in the past. Quite a few are current scholarship recipients. A good number are our friends and relatives.
We are particularly indebted to Marta Kolomayets, a former Chicagoan and current board member who has lived in Kyiv since the early 1990s. She takes much work on herself, acts as a liason, and helps to run things from the Ukrainian end.
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Tanya Hrytsiv is the UCARE coordinator in Ukraine. Her job is to help carry out the projects we plan in back in the USA. Tanya works hard to help keep the stipendiat program running smoothly, to help organize our routes, and to bring other projects to fruition. Through her work with our students, she has become a surrogate mother for many of them.
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| Tetyana Hrytsiv |
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| Maria Kavunenko |
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Maria is our accountant. She handles all our financial transactions, navigating the Byzantine and ever-changing regulations that govern charity organizations in Ukraine.
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Maryna Krysa is the president of "Priyateli Ditey" (Help Us Help the Children of Ukraine). She helps us with logistics in planning our routes and camps. Her organization helps us run the Stipendiat program, and also finds sponsors for the students. Maryna has many of her own projects in Ukraine, including summer camps and Dnipro cruises for orphans. She has valuable connections within Ukraine, and has helped us get donations of goods (including chocolates) for our routes and camps.
Maryna has been a huge help to us since the beginning; her love of children has caused her to travel to hundreds of orphanages over the last fifteen years, and she has spent countless hours at camps and on routes with us.
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| Maryna Krysa |
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| Zhana Kuznetsova |
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Zhana is Maryna's personal assistant. She is in charge of getting things going and keeping them moving along on time. This is a Sisyphean task in Ukraine.
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Olena is the coordinator of the Education Project. She works with scholarship students, both those sponsored by American donors through UCARE (the Stipendiat program), and hose sponsored by Ukrainian donors through Priyateli Ditey. She also is in charge of postage stamps.
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| Olena Melnikova |
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| Dima Samarskiy |
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Dima Samarskiy is a social worker. He now works for Priyateli Ditey, but had previously been a volunteer for many years. He attended many summer camps for orphans, where he taught them real life coping skills – valuable lessons for teenagers who have sent most of their lives in institutions or dysfunctional families.
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A few photos of the volunteers who helped out with our fall 2007 route.
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| Underwear don't pack themselves |
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| Everything must be properly labeled |
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| A short break for tea at the Kyiv office |
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| On the long, long road |
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| Everyone loves chocolate |
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| Spending time with the kids is really the most important thing of all |
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