Children ask: “Hear with your hearts”
The All-Ukraine benevolent TV project “Missing Children Search Service,” which is aimed at reuniting as many street children as possible with their families, is marking its sixth year of service to the community.
Since its inception this social project has helped return more than 400 children to their families. Not so long ago the project’s fifth awards ceremony took place in Cherkasy, where the winners of the Tender Heart Prize were named; selected from among activists who dedicate their time and energy to locating homeless children. In return for their dedicated efforts, these people were awarded valuable prizes and golden heart badges.
According to Militia Lieutenant Colonel Ihor Shybko, one of the Tender Heart nominees and head of the Cherkasy regional juvenile department of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, the work of finding missing children in Cherkasy can be described as effective. Since the start of the year the department has received 30 applications from families seeking their missing children; 25 of them were returned within 72 hours of their disappearance. The remaining children were found and returned to their parents within a few weeks or a month. In some cases, it was determined that minors of both sexes located in the oblast were from other countries (Moldova, Belarus, and Russia).
In each case it is important to find the right approach to a child. Adults must avoid displaying an indifferent or tough attitude during discussions of the child’s return to his or her family. The most important consideration is to avoid hypocrisy. The Cherkasy militia force has a lot of good friends who volunteer for this duty.
“I’ve been involved with this social center for three years, and I’m very grateful to these people for their good deeds, so I decided to help them as much as I can. I told them I would paste their missing children search bulletins on lampposts, walls of buildings, fences, and elsewhere,” Valentyna Savchynska, an 82-year-old pensioner, told The Day. “What joy it is to paste ‘found’ on the photo of a missing child. I remember when they told us that they had found a girl who had been missing for several weeks. It was evening, and there was a horrible blizzard. But I couldn’t wait until morning and went out to paste the happy ‘found’ notices on the search bulletins across the city. I was raising my grandson because his mother had disowned him, so I know only too well what it means for a child to know that there is someone who really cares.”
“Sometimes we have to use guerilla tactics because not all janitors are happy to see our posters. Perhaps we should get some advertising agencies involved in the project,” says Borys Isaichenko, another Tender Heart nominee in Cherkasy. “One day I saw some volunteers from the social center. They were painting the swings in the children’s playground, so I went outside to help them. Now my wife and I work there. She always supports me when I help Cherkasy Prospects do their good work. Posters are only part of the work that softhearted people can do to help raise our children as sensitive individuals.”
“The experience accumulated by the Missing Children Search Service over the past six years is extremely important. Official agencies of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, civic organizations, volunteers, and such important businesses as the Foxtrot group of companies are involved in this work,” Volodymyr Hres, chairman of the Cherkasy oblast council, declared during the awards ceremony.
“We instantly liked the Missing Children Search concept proposed by Magnolia TV, so we quickly defined our contribution to this socially important project. At one time Yevhenia Tkachenko, the director general, said in a private conversation that this project should be a nationwide one, on a much greater scale. That was when we recruited our huge army of volunteers at the Prospects social center branches in Kyiv, Cherkasy, Donetsk, and Mariupil. We acquired our first positive search experiences in Cherkasy two years ago, so we are here today with presents for Cherkasy’s concerned citizens,” said Foxtrot’s deputy director-general (public relations) Liudmyla Lozova.
Congratulations and thanks were exchanged. As the awards evening came to an end, the Lada Choir of Cherkasy’s youth club Rovesnyk (Peer) — which collaborates with Foxtrot’s Cherkasy Prospects in tracking down missing children — performed a song accompanied by signing for the benefit of deaf children in the audience. The children’s message to the adults was summed up by Iryna Sikalo, a young resident of Cherkasy, who signed: “Grownups, hear us with your hearts.”
