LOCAL GROUPS

Area:  Helpston is a small village midway between the Cathedral City of Peterborough and the market town of Stamford.  Helpston is well known as the birth place of the peasant poet John Clare. 

Group Coordinator:  Cecilia Hammond – tel. 01733 252118 or 07779 264591

Email focc_helpston@msn.com

The Chernobyl Children returned to us for their second visit this summer, greeting us with waves and huge smiles. 

Most of our returning children, looked much healthier and more confident, last summer’s visit together with the vitamins which were given to the whole family, have made a big difference to the children’s health. 

Thankfully most of the children have grown well, although we do have some worries about some whose health has been of concern.  Amongst the twenty children were the paler, more anxious faces of our five new children, however with support and encouragement from their host families these children soon settled.  

The main aim of FOCC is to increase the health, fitness and self-esteem of the Chernobyl Children.  Everything that we do with the children has these aims in mind; however, the children see it as simply having fun, and much fun was had!  We were lucky enough to be able to use the New Scout building once more for our play scheme and the play facilities at John Clare School.

For most of the children the high light of the play scheme was a three day residential in Norfolk where they stayed by the sea.  Belarus is a land locked country. The children had a wonderful time playing in the shallows and building sand castles. 

They didn’t let the British weather stand in their way and were immediately into their swimmers and splashing around, the girls even tried sunbathing, which was possibly a bit keen.  The boys were thrilled to find a jelly fish, and designed it a new home.  It was very relieved to be back into the sea at the end of the day! 

Whilst here the children are kitted out with a whole wardrobe of good quality used clothing and new trainers. 

 John Lewis plc, Peterborough, kindly donated school shoes for every child.

Vitamins are given to the children and their siblings for the whole year, thanks to Merck Pharmaceuticals and F.Maltby & Sons Ltd.  The children also see both the dentist (Paul & Elaine Shepherd) and the optician (Specsavers Stamford & the Eye Care Centre, Spalding) several children needed glasses and some needed extensive dental work. 

Fund-raising is an essential part of making all this happen; we try to find a sponsor for each of the children and the interpreters.  We are so grateful to our sponsors who donate £450 for each child to give them the chance to improve their health and self-esteem. 

The King’s School made the Chernobyl Children one of the focuses of their Charities Week, raising over £4,000, a fantastic effort. 

One of our little girls is known as King’s Katya, as part of that money went to sponsoring her four week respite in our community. It is wonderful to find young people who work so hard to help other young people.  If you would be interested in sponsoring a child or helping with fund-raising, we would be delighted to hear from you.

She feels that now she is not alone, that some of the pressure to clothe all the children in the family is removed, and that, just as importantly, somebody cares. She very much appreciates the money which is sent home with the children, this enables her to buy school uniform.

She has watched her child grow in both confidence and health, get on better at school now and have less sickness with respiratory infections.   

She doesn’t think that those of us in England realise how much difference our support makes.