My wife, kids and I are doing something a bit different for the holidays this year: We are opening our home to a 15-year-old orphan girl from the Ukraine for a month.
It's part of a program called Project 143, which brings kids from Ukraine and Latvia twice a year to the United States. While not an adoption program, among its primary goals are to introduce these kids to a new culture, and to help them make connections that could help them in the future. They can explain it better than me at projectonefortythree.org
Anyway, as you can imagine, getting a teen from rural Ukraine to Michigan is not cheap. We have created a fundraising page at link for anyone interested in helping out. There's also a little more about the kiddo in question there.
We all know the situation in Ukraine, and I probably don't have to tell you the future for orphans is particularly bleak. Something like 15% commit suicide before age 18, and upwards of 75% of the girls end up in human trafficking.
To this day I can remember my grandfather, among his many stories of WW2, saying how the GIs wished there was more they could do for the orphaned kids in France and Belgium than hand out chocolate bars. There are a lot of reasons why we are doing this, but I have to say his memory is certainly one.
Thanks for listening and considering! I'd be happy to talk with anyone more about the program.
