BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

24/06/2009

Clane welcomes Belarusian kids on respite visit

By Conor McHugh

THIRTEEN children, ranging in ages from eight to 16 years of age, from Belarus arrived in Clane last Thursday afternoon.

They will be staying with families in north Kildare for the next month, during which time they will brush up on their English, make new friends and generally improve their health.

It was a long trip for the youngsters who travelled almost six hours from their hometown of Gorki to Minsk before getting on a three and a half hour flight to Dublin.

And their flight was further delayed for a couple of hours.

But by the time they arrived to a welcome reception in Clane GAA at 5pm that evening, the 13 were still wide awake and full of beans, and glad to be in Ireland.

All but four of the children had been there before. In fact several had been there quite a number of times.

Lillian Murray of the Lillywhite Chernobyl Children's Trust told the Leinster Leader that many of the children return, at the request of the Kildare families.

"I've had a girl coming to me for the past nine years. She's nineteen years old now but she's doing exams this year so she can't come."

"They're health goes way up after the month they've been here. It adds an extra two and a half years to their life," Lillian explained. "And their radiation levels go way down."

One of the activities the children do while they're here is attend the dentist. "In Belarus they pull teeth with no anaesthetic," Lillian noted. "Finglas Dental Clinic are very good to us."

And some of them need glasses which is also attended to, but none of the children in the group has any major medical problems.

The cost of the flights for all of the children is n7,500, which the group covers, and has held fundraisers in the past in order to achieve this.

After the children go back, a group of Irish people from the group will go back with a convoy and build a playground and a kitchen in an orphanage.

Some of the 13 are from an orphanage, but some are also from needy families.

"There are lads who will take two weeks out of their holdays to go out there. What they get done in two weeks is amazing - it would take much longer to get done if they were here.

"It's no holiday," she explained. "It's all about working."

And she added that the playground toys for the orphanage are made by the prisoners in Wheatfield prison.

Source:

http://www.leinsterleader.ie/news/Clane-welcomes-Belarusian-kids-on.5396287.jp

Google
 


Partners:
Face.by Social Network
Face.by