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Kateryna Yushchenko Visits Sumy Suprun Boarding School for Orphaned Children and Children, Deprived of Parents’ Care

May 10, 2007, Head of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund’s Supervisory Board Kateryna Yushchenko visited the Sumy Suprun Boarding School for Orphaned Children and Children, Deprived of Parents’ Care. Among other participants of the event were Head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Health Protection Tetiana Bakhteyeva, UNICEF Representative in Ukraine Jeremy Hartley, Director of the Triumph of Heart charitable organization Stephan-Arpad Madjar, and representatives of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund and Sumy Oblast State Administration.

Accompanied by the school’s principal Viktor Vertel, Mrs. Yushchenko took a tour of the school premises and talked to the children and teachers. In part, she visited the ethnography museum created by the school’s pupils and faculty, and a showroom exhibiting the wards’ works.

On behalf of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund, Mrs. Yushchenko presented the school with a set of plastic window panes. Thus, the Ukraine 3000 Fund has joined the Give the School Windows action initiated in March 2007 by the Sumy Oblast State Administration. Within the framework of this action, alumni of Sumy schools undertook obligation to equip educational institutions in the oblast with modern plastic windows. At present, 342 windows have been replaced and over 1000 letters sent to the alumni inviting them to take part in the action.

Mrs. Yushchenko also presented the boarding school with the Classics books collection in the Ukrainian language and richly illustrated map of Ukraine.

In their turn, the wards of the Suprun Boarding School gave Mrs. Kateryna an icon they had embroidered and presented a small concert to honor the guests.

Addressing the audience, Mrs. Kateryna said that visiting this boarding school was special for her, since it had been the first institution of this kind she visited in Ukraine. It happened in November 1995 on an invitation from the Friends of the Children Charitable Fund. “Since then I have visited many orphanages in Ukraine, but I always had been wanting to come back here,” she said.

Mrs. Kateryna noted that, having returned to the Suprun Boarding School after 12 years, she “noticed many changes for the better, which is very nice to see.” “I can feel true Ukrainian spirit here, and I can see great teachers and wonderful children here,” she said.

Mrs. Yushchenko emphasized that the Ukraine 3000 Fund had gladly joined the Give the School Windows action. “I urge everybody to remember that helping others is our duty. When you do good, it will return to you a hundredfold,” she said.

Boarding School for Orphaned Children and Children, Deprived of Parents’ Care was founded August 1, 1978. In 1979 it was named after renowned test pilot Stepan Suprun. The school has two departments: for preschoolers, hosting 38 pupils, and for 1 to 9 Grades students, hosting 150 orphaned children. The school building has 16 study rooms and homework rooms, a gym, computer class, training and manufacturing workshops supplied with necessary equipment and training appliances. The school’s faculty numbers 68 members, 18 of them being teachers and another 40 – tutors. Social pedagogues, psychologists, speech therapists, coaches, music teachers, working at the school, are skilled professionals using most effective teaching methods. For many years the students have been actively participating in the summer camp in Vorokhta, organized by the Friends of the Children Charitable Fund.

Head of the Fund’s Supervisory Board Kateryna Yushchenko and representatives of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund are on a one-day working trip to Sumy. In addition to the visit to the Sumy Suprun Boarding School for Orphaned Children and Children, Deprived of Parents’ Care, the trip schedule lists the Sumy Oblast Children’s Clinical Hospital (member of the Hospital to Hospital program), Sumy National Agricultural University, and Sumy Oblast Local History Museum.