Chipping Welcomes
Children of Chernobyl
Friends of Chernobyl's Children is a Registered Charity (Reg. Charity Nos. 1049689) which devotes its energies to raising funds to bring children, who are at risk, from Belarus to England for a month every year. The charity targets children from orphanages or disadvantaged homes, aged between six and thirteen. These children are in great need and come from social situations that make it difficult for them to get the care they require at home.
On the 26
April 1986 the No 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in
northern Ukraine, overheated, exploded and went in to melt-down. This
event became the world's worst nuclear accident releasing 190 tons of
highly radioactive material into the atmosphere and exposing the people of
Chernobyl to radioactivity 90 times greater than that from the explosion
of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
The country of
Belarus lies in the shadow of Chernobyl, the southern border being only 15
kilometres from the plant. The wind direction on the day of the disaster
caused the majority of the fallout to be directed towards the
Belarusian towns of Gomel and Mogilev. Of the radiation that was released
by Chernobyl, over 70% fell onto the population of Belarus resulting in
800,000 children in Belarus and 380,000 in the Ukraine being at a high
risk of contracting cancer or leukemia.
Olwyn Keogh, MBE, the founder and Chief Executive of
Friends of Chernobyl's Children is
a past resident of Chipping and first arranged a visit to the village by a group of children
from Belarus in September 2005. The Chipping/Longridge
group is now well established and jointly operates along with the
Blackburn group under the banner of FOCC U.K. We now host a visit in the
Spring each year for around 20 Children. Chipping Scout group provide use
of their minibus and St. Mary’s Church
give us the use of the Community Hall during the visits which is a great help to us, and we much appreciate their
kindness. The whole village always seem keen to
make the visits a success and we get a great deal of support in achieving this
from other organisations such as local uniformed groups, schools, churches
and businesses. We are very grateful for this assistance without which we
would be so much less effective.
Our next visit will be in May 2011 and we will be holding a meeting to begin planning for this event in St Mary's Community Centre Sometime in the run up to this visit.
The
Friends of Chernobyl's Children is an ecumenical group
established to help the deprived children of
Please click here or Email Kate for more information about the work of the group and future planned visits
GIFT AID. We used to have quite a number of donations that were Gift Aided, this has dwindled substantially over the years and we would ask you to consider if you could make a monthly donation which you as a tax payer could Gift Aid. It is a matter of signing a simple form to say you are a taxpayer, which then allows the Charity to claim back the tax you have paid on the donated amount. Please consider this to help us with our funding.
Click Here to visit the Friends of Chernobyl's Children Website
Click here if you would like to make any suggestions about how this site could be improved.