Chernobyl Children's Project International

thievery corporation & chernobyl 20 spark support for children

Last week I was honored to receive a check from lounge/electronica band Thievery Corporation and Mondano ("World Citizen')  Mondano is a Washington DC based alliance that ignites transnational cultural and artistic collaborations.

Pictured above:  Andre Kravchenko (Mondano), Eric Hilton (Thievery Corporation), me, Rob Garza (TC) and Bill Crandall (Mondano) at ESL Music.

The team embarked last year on a project called Chernobyl 20 -- an effort to focus attention on Chernobyl's continuing consequences.  The collaboration brought together photographers, musicians, and the final haunting recording of a beloved vocalist.

The Chernobyl 20 photo exhibition examined the contrasting perspectives of photographers Antonin Kratochvil, Paul Fusco, Bill Crandall, Donald Weber, Gabriella Bulisova, Robert Knoth, and other artists. Some of the photographers traveled with CCPI through Chernobyl regions.  The exhibition was shown at the United Nations and at the US Congress hearings on the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl.

Robert Knoth's powerful affection for Annya Pesenko, who has a brain tumor, is captured in the photo shown here.  We feel privileged to count Annya's family among those served by CCPI's hospice program in Gomel, Belarus.  I was saddened to tell Robert about this brave girl's poor condition on my last visit to her.  It was heartbreaking to see her struggle to remain conscious, and the pressure on her mother was enormous.

Thievery Corporation's The Passing Stars was the last song recorded by Pam Bricker.  Pam was the voice behind Thievery Corporation's iconic song, Lebanese Blond.  After her death, Eric and Rob kept the song from commercial release, and placed it on iTunes with all proceeds to help children affected by Chernobyl.  Eric told us, "Pam would have been proud that her final track helped people in this way." Included with the download is a digital booklet of the Chernobyl 20 photo exhibition.  You can find both on iTunes by searching for "Thievery Corporation" and selecting "The Passing Stars."

This effort brought together diverse talents in common cause.  It not only raised funds that will be put to good use.  It reached new audiences to broaden the understanding of the ongoing nature of the Chernobyl disaster.

100+ chernobyl volunteers set to return home today

Over 100 Irish, Australian and American volunteers will return home today after spending three weeks in Chernobyl affected regions of Belarus. 

We employ about 20 local staff in Belarus, have partnerships with a number of local organizations, and at any given time we usually have volunteers and program directors "in the field."  This trip, however, was a large scale effort many months in the planning. 

Most of the volunteers on this trip were were builders -- carpenters, plumbers, masons, and the like who gave up their vacation time to come and complete work on the Vesnova Asylum in Belarus.  (Here's more about how we help.)  Nurses and therapeutic staff joined the teams in Vesnova, where they trained local caretakers in proper techniques and followed up on care plans for the children, who have a wide range of physical and intellectual abilities.  About 50 very serious ill children live in the facility's "high dependency unit" and require extraordinary care.   

As this work was happening, a management team led by CCPI founder Adi Roche visited projects across the country and met with employees, local partners, and government officials.  Key areas for evaluation were our foster care program and community care program in Minsk.  Adi, joined by Jim Clarken -- our new general manager in Ireland -- and Marie Cox, our medical care program  director, also examined the effectiveness of a new "aid direct" program that provides year round deliveries of necessary supplies for our community centers.  This program improves upon our  annual aid convoy.  Now, we are able to deliver good and supplies as needed, and we are purchasing locally, which puts aid dollars back into the local community to raise the standard of living for all.  Now that certain supplies are readily available in Belarus -- which was not the case when we first started our work in the country -- we are seeing huge cost efficiencies in purchasing locally rather than trucking across Europe! 

The management team visited our completed community centers in Zhitkovichy and Petrikov, and surveyed potential new sites in Glutsk and Buda-Kachalova.  Our community centers and programs target the most under served and at risk communities.  The centers serve a wide variety of community needs . . . therapeutic services for disabled children, child care classes, vocational training and employment services, homework help, computer centers, and more.  Our objective is to give communities the means they need to become self sufficient and avoid the downward spiral of poverty and hopelessness that leads families to place their children in institutions.

We also spent time examining our hospice program in Gomel, to ensure that the needs of families with the most seriously ill children are being properly met by our team of local nurses and psychologists. Meeting these families face to face allows us to hear directly from them whether we are doing a good job and how we can improve our services in the community.

Even as we examined our on board projects, the seeds of new ones were sown in meetings with community leaders across the country who are eager to move forward from Chernobyl.  We'll report back with our progress.