11.02.2014, Vinnytska oblast
Nearly 30 UAH* is a sum of money determined by the Ukrainian state as sufficient for one day of life and for healthy state of being of elderly person or individual who lost his/her ability to work. Therefore, every month Caritas Ukraine office and its regional organizations receive hundreds of requests from people who need care, material means, nutrition products, healthcare and medication, reabilitation equipment and money support.
In the measure of its financial and human resources Caritas Ukraine takes care of nearly 600 seniors and those who need outside assistance within Home Care project. For the last 12 years on basis of its organizations in 8 oblasts of Ukraine, with help of Home Care project Caritas Ukraine provided care for over 7** thousands of seniors, disabled individuals, people who live with HIV/AIDS, palliative patients, victims of totalitarian regimes and Ostarbeiters. Only for the last 5*** years Caritas Ukraine spent more than 20 million UAH on care of people in need of assistance from outside.
Galyna Kurnytska, Home Care project coordinator, retells: “Almost a year ago a letter from Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine was sent to Caritas Ukraine. It included a request to provide material assistance to Volodymyr Poberezhnui from Vinnytska oblast. Young man was and at the moment is in crisis life conditions, being unemployed, limited in housing space and finances, and living in wheelchair.
Without getting into details why Ministry of Social Policy redirects such letters to us and doesn’t implement its direct functions and how long such situation in the country will last. The most important is the other fact: we have found a wheelchair and some material assistance for Volodymyr and it significantly favored changes in his life!” Galyna Kurnytska points out gladly.
You can read Volodymyr letter-appeal for help here.
We got acquainted with Volodymyr Poberezhnui in January last year. He turned out to be an incredibly strong, cheerful and extraordinary personality. He is a wheelchair-bound individual who is disabled since childhood with spina bifida. All his life he lives in the village of Vinnytska oblast. The attitude of relatives and parents was humiliating and there were no possibility to get secondary and high education. But constant oppression, rejection and isolation didn’t influence Volody
myr to become a sociopath or a solitary individual, and this young man is full of faith, dreams, desires to develop and travel.
“Recently, we received a letter of thanks and a note about advances from Volodia – it cheers and inspires for more scrupulous work for the benefit of people in crisis living conditions! We want to share this wonderful letter with you, our friends, partners and donors” says Galyna Kurnytska.
“Dear Galyna,
I heartily congratulate you with New Year 2014 and Christmas holidays that passed, I am convinced that this year will bring you coziness and more faith in the better future!
I wish you good mood, health to you and your relatives, happiness, welfare and harmony, generous and successful year, inexhaustible optimism and realization of all hopes in this year! Let you and all Caritas employees be lucky!
I am really grateful to you for the wheelchair received. You can’t imagne where I travelled with its help. In summer I went to Zakarpathian region, in Beregovo, I undertook treatment in thermal basin. Afterwards, at the end of August I went to Crimea, in Saky, on a healing lake. I went through a course of therapeutic massage. Now I am in Kyiv region and soon will return to Vinnytsya region.
If I hadn’t had such a wheelchair, I wouldn’t be able to go somewhere from the village. Day by day I would have lived in village house 
with parents, grandmother, stepbrother, his wife and their two-year old child. In this house I don’t have my own corner, where I can simply lay in silence and have a rest. I live in walk-through room…
I have told you that I am even afraid to change a diaper. I’m hiding and listening carefully whether nobody’s coming in here. We don’t have a restroom. My wheelchair is too big to move through a house door, I can’t pass over a doorstep. In the village all roads, except the central one, have ground coating – it means that since November till April I stay at home.
With your help I finally feel that life doesn’t pass by me and I am a part of it! I am enormously grateful to you and let God take care of you work and enrich it!
Yours sincerely, Volodymyr Poberezhnui”
You can get more information about Home Care project by the following link.
You can donate to support the project here.
* the sum of living wage per month and minimum pension was determined for the period of 1 January-1 December 2013 in the amount of 894 UAH
** it is an approximate number, because in 12 years due to changes with project financing the number of Home Care centers changed and the number of clients was different respectively; the average amount of project clients equaled to almost 500 individuals annually
*** speaking about 2008-2013
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