City of children: Lugansk administrtive officials are ready to solve the problems of homeless children

Unusual building started up in front of the Lugansk region administration. It took couple of minutes the volunteers of action to build the CITY OF CHILDREN. In such way the Lugansk children rights protection center “POSTUP” decided to attract the attention of administrative officials to the problem of homeless orphans.

- Children rights protection network, which is represented in Lugask with the rights protection center “Postup” (steps – Ukr.), is serving at the moment 9 such clients. 4 of whom are orphans, which have no lodging. Two brothers have house, which is not liveable. The next two clients – brother and sister who have no parental custody have very strange situation: the boy has settled estate (the house is also not liveable) and the sister has nothing, - informs the social worker of the center Ivetta Kuzmina. – We see, that this problem is typical for our region.

The workers of Children rights protection network say, that they got tired with the inactivity of local administrative officials. They expect, that local administration will find ways to keep the law and to provide orphans with lodging.
To attract the attention the activists built the pasteboard city like usual the homeless people do. Also they brought homemade benches, trees and sewer manholes. Homeless orphans are faced leaving in such interior after 18 – when they leave internats.

The next object, which the activists set was to influence the public opinion.
- It is difficult even for adult people to solve such problems. And for these children, who wave no family and no protection ins is just unrealizable, tells the Lugansk city dweller Wasily. Some of the passerbies set their hands on the appeal to the head of local council Valery Golenko.

The activists tried to reach understanding with administrative officials about the ways of deciding of this issue. The part of the strategy should be dialog with NGOs, which are working with this problem.

Some of the young clients of Children rights protection network came to the demonstration.
Igor is the student of vocational school. According to one document the house, where he has to live belongs to him, according another document – to his mother, who died. In fact now it belongs to the state, because the young man missed the term of limitation. The house is ruined and nobody knows, who has to repair it. The boy can not pretend to another lodging, because on the paper he has the place to live.
- When mother died I was 9, and my brother was 10. We were taken to the internat the next day. The house was OK. When I came back in 9 years it were no windows, no doors, in the roof was a big whole. I went to the head of the village and ask him to come with me to look at the house. He refused to do it.

When the activists tried to enter the house of Region administration the cheaf of department of children protection appeared on the porch. Raisa Rodina said, that the administration is ready to cooperate with children rights protection organization, but the problem should be solved also on the level of local governments of every city and village.