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Walk through any village in the Ukrainian countryside and you will see little single storey houses each with a bucket and rope well for a water supply and surrounded by vegetable garden. To western eyes a it can seem picturesque albeit in a somewhat dilapidated sort of way. Here also you will see the Babushkas - ‘Grandmothers’. Always with a head scarf, and usually a cheap floral pattern dress and carpet slippers they spend the hot summer days bent over with hoe in hand tending the crops they depend upon to get them through the long hard Ukrainian winter.
Many of these elderly ladies will be widows. They have lost their husbands to war, deportations, smoking, alcohol and the sheer severity of life in Soviet Ukraine. In the years since independence they have lost most of their pensions and seen any savings they may have had destroyed by rampant inflation. Their families have long since moved to the cities and sometimes they are the only people left living in all but abandoned villages.
In towns, life for widows in grim soviet-era apartment blocks is no easier. Without land to grow vegetables they may have to be on the streets trying to make a few Hryvnias by selling anything they can get hold of. The desperate last resort is begging – kneeling on the ground and holding out a plastic cup in hands gnarled by a lifetime of hard work.
One way that Hope Now helps widows in and around Cherkassy is with their feeding programme. Basic foodstuffs are provided for those most in need. This is a lifeline for widows with nowhere else to turn.
Perhaps of even greater importance is bringing friendship and happiness to these lonely and often fearful ladies at the very special Widows and Widowers camps at Kompas Park. Each September we welcome widows and widowers for a time of friendship, fun, Bible teaching, prayer and praise. Volunteers from the UK and America come to help Ukrainian Hope Now staff give these precious people a time of relaxation, spiritual renewal and much, much more. For some of the widows this is the first holiday they have ever had.
This is such a worthwhile ministry, which means so much to the ladies and gentlemen who come to our camps. If you would like to sponsor a widow or widower so they can be blessed by a week at Kompas Park please send a donation to us at the Southampton office. Each £50 received will allow Hope Now to give a needy widow or widower a wonderful week as well as something really special to talk to their neighbours about all winter!
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