Our Children

Our children was created in 1990 for
the purpose of promoting children's
welfare and protection of children's
rights and interests. "Our Children"
is a non-government and non-profit
organization in Ukraine. At present, Our children unites over
12, 000 parents and children of
Ukraine with a central office located
in Odessa. We have branches in the
largest cities of Ukraine, such as
Kiev, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk,
Kharkov, Lvov, Zaporozhye, and
others. Our main financing comes
from grants (10%), memberships
(81%), and private charity (9%).

Our organization promotes activity
along 4 guidelines: children's
welfare, mass media, social projects,
and special projects.

1. Children's Welfare. We are
engaged in primary preventive
maintenance of youth social
problems, including: street children,
reduction in the spread of HIV/AIDS
disease; social adaptation of
disabled children, adaptation and
integration of children and families of
refugees in to Ukrainian society.
These activities are conducted within
the framework of the program
Blossoming Cherry, comprising of 5
clubs and 3 studios (health
improvement-, art-, sport-clubs),
summer/winter camps, special
children's holidays, competitions,
galleries, and so on.

2. Mass Media. We have an All-
Ukrainian children's newspaper
"Blossoming Cherry," TV-programs
from teenagers TV-studio (TTV), and
a bulletin of the Youth Information
Center.

3. Social Projects. We are developing
programs in human rights, including
women's rights and self-employment,
and popularization of children's
rights. For example, special
competition of children's picture,
which illustrate CRC's article.

4. Special Projects. We are
developing a Geo-informational
System with an address database of
15,000 children in Odessa (for
monitoring and evaluation of
different youth projects in the city), a
software package of computer
psychological tests, and cooperation
with other international
organizations.

We are partners with UNICEF,
UNHCR, COUNTERPART, US Peace
Corp, and the Canadian Embassy.