Ballybrit native, Grace Kennedy, who has raised over €70,000 and found homes for over 5,000 displaced Ukrainians fleeing the war, has called for an urgent fundraising appeal for a makeshift orphanage in Bucha.
Kennedy, a law tutor for the University of Galway, appeared on an RTÉ documentary titled, The War at Home, which focused on the courageous and generous exploits of Irish people in aiding Ukrainian citizens fleeing the war.
Regularly travelling over and back to Ukraine, Kennedy was in the country last week, when massive waves of Russian air strikes hit cities around Ukraine.
Describing the events, Kennedy said, “Usually we know where we will be hit, but this time it was literally the whole country being rained on.”
For the past few months, Kennedy has been helping provide medicine and food to a makeshift orphanage in the city of Bucha, which has seen over 10 children a day coming from Zaporizhia, a city in South East Ukraine, an area badly hit by the weekends attacks. The orphanage is solely run by a young woman named Maryna who is caring for a vastly growing number of children and is rapidly running out of the means to do so.
“Maryna is completely on her own; there’s over 10 kids a day coming and she’s been there since day one,” explained Kennedy, who recently visited the orphanage to deliver aid. “We keep them, feed them and give them medicine if they need it.
“They come with very little, no documents or information. Often children arrive sick with chest infections and need some help.”
When asked how are the children getting to Maryna’s house, Kennedy explained that often neighbours or even strangers will drop off unsupervised children.
“They are sometimes dropped off by strangers, or maybe people they have met in shelters along the way. A lot of the children are around the age of kindergarteners, whose parents dropped them off at school before going to work and, for some reason or another, never came back.”
Bucha, an city region of Kyiv, was previously under Russian occupation at the beginning of the year, having been liberated after just over one month. Bucha and surrounding cities have since seen the public eye move on, focusing now on areas where conflicts still rage. As such the likelihood of much needed aid being diverted away from eastern areas to Bucha, is unlikely.
“We are coming into winter now, and nobody is really concentrating on the west anymore. The journalists are gone, the cameras are gone and the focus is gone. We are just left with the aftermath,” said Kennedy.
With so many sick and needy children coming to Maryna’s house, any surplus aid is running out rapidly, and a drastic rise in fuel prices mean that even if medicines and food can be sourced, transporting it to the house is a major problem.
“I have everything costed down to a tee. I have Monday and Tuesday this week completely covered, but after Wednesday, I do not know what I will do. Last week we were parked up, full of aid because we had no money for fuel,” said Kennedy.
As such, things are becoming desperate for the home, with Kennedy appealing to anyone who can give financially at this time, to do so via her GoFundMe page. Find it by searching “Grace Kennedy - the journey to Ireland” on the GoFundMe website, www.gofundme.com
