Caritas Kolomyya Makes Apple Juice

08.10.12, Kolomyya
“Fall is a rich time of year as orchards are weighed down with a great many apples. Caritas Kolomyya-Chernivtsi eparchy traditionally re-opens its Charitable Juice Press project out of the village of Kovalivka. This project has been providing high quality juice to the local soup kitchen for three years in a row. Every day the soup kitchen feeds dozens of disadvantaged individuals,” reports Fr. Serhiy Tryf’yak, Director of Caritas Kolomyya-Chernivtsi.

Thanks to assistance received from Caritas Olomouc (Czech Republic) and Fr. Rostyslav Stroyvuc, Caritas Kolomyya has everything it needs to operate the juice press including a commercial press with an output capacity of 400 litres an hour and a special commercial sterilization vat. The local Caritas branch also played a role in launching this effort by funding the renovation of the facility which houses the press.

According to project coordinators individuals can bring apples and have them turned into juice for 1 UAH/kg. For villagers this is a chance to make some extra money; for Caritas it’s an opportunity to stock their soup kitchen with juice and encourage people to participate in philanthropic activity. This year, in addition to apple juice, Caritas plans to make carrot-apple juice and apple-pumpkin juice.

Caritas administrators say that this project has helped them create an ecologically clean product which is so desperately lacking on the Ukrainian market. They use only the best apples for making juice. Local Caritas employees expect that the Charitable Juice Press will make natural juice available to everyone who wants it. Everyone who volunteers on a charitable project receives juice as a token of gratitude.

Caritas Kolomyya cares for children of labour migrants and disadvantaged families; they run the Home Care program for isolated elderly individuals and teach others how to care for ill and feeble family members and loved ones. They also run a soup kitchen, community laundry facility, distribute humanitarian assistance and conduct other charitable events.