“Towards Dreams” comes to an end

The children’s charity festival “Towards Dreams” has been helping children to reveal their talents and realize their dreams since 2007. This year over 2,000 talented orphans from children’s houses and orphanages from various Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, Odesa, and Zaporizhia, participated in the All-Ukrainian children’s creative contest under the motto “Kindle the Dream!” A celebrity jury selected 324 finalists in the nominations “singing,” “choreography,” and “original genre.” The 16-year-old Sofia Kozak from the Strilky boarding school, who performed the moving song Winter in Your Eyes (her own music and lyrics to the accompaniment of guitar), won the grand prize. Sofia got a notebook as a gift and will be the first child to go to the talent competition “Slavic Crown” in Bulgaria in the summer of 2011. Another talented singer, the 17-year-old Viktoria Piatko, who impressed everyone with her brilliant rap-song Dream, took the third place in the nomination “singing,” and received a special prize from Sean Carr — musician, frontman of the DVS group and husband of Yevhenia Carr. The prize was an opportunity to record her song at the Lakeside recording studio. The unsurpassed acrobat Mykhailo Havryliuk, who performed his impressive Acrobatic Fancies only with the use of his hands (he is disabled and uses a wheelchair to move around), received a special prize from the friend and partner of the festival Andrii Klymenko. His prize was a new notebook, and a weekend trip to Lviv — a special prize from the chain of hotels Akord. Sofia Kozak also got a similar trip to Kyiv, and Oleksandra Usok got one to Odesa. All the participants, without exceptions, received prizes and gifts in the form of winter jackets, hats, sport suites, backpacks, stuffed toys, stationery, hygiene products, because all of them made such bold steps towards fulfilling their dreams.