On 30 October, the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Centre and DTEK presented a joint long-term project Save life! at a press conference in the Ukrainian News agency. The initiative will start in November 2014 and continue until May 2015. It is a part of Rinat Akhmetov Help Children large-scale programme to provide humanitarian, medical, psychological and targeted help to children who live in the ATO area or suffered during the hostilities. The project’s goal is to save children from injuries and death in the area of ongoing or recently terminated military operations.

Rimma Fil, Coordinator of the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Centre: “The Humanitarian Centre is launching the first national large-scale project to both prevent tragedies and provide help if an accident did happen. Yet it is important not only to treat children but also provide an efficient and quality psychological help. We realise the scope of the issue as every day our hotline takes calls and we roll out targeted and psychological assistance projects. Children are a target today. The Humanitarian Centre and FC Shakhtar are taking care of 20 injured children and there’s no available information as to the exact number of kids injured in the ATO area. Yet the accident in Zugres when school children tripped a bomb at a plant and the stories we hear from the foster homes that the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation is taking care of and from SCM Group companies located in Ukraine’s east – all of them suggest a systemwide problem.”   

The project includes two parts: informing children about threats in the ATO area and providing medical and psychological help if a tragedy happens. Today the Humanitarian Centre is starting an awareness campaign as school children are on holiday, some do not go to schools in Ukraine’s east and have a lot of free time as they are left to themselves. 

Based on the UNICEF information, the Humanitarian Centre and DTEK printed 10,000 booklets and 5,000 posters written in simple language that explain what areas to avoid, what places can be dangerous, what objects to be aware of and what actions to take if you have found them.

The information booklets will be dispensed by DTEK through its businesses in Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. “We initiated the project because the children that suffered in Zugres are our employees’ kids,” said Anatoliy Solovyov, a representative of DTEK Department of Social Development. “Three survivors are still being treated and supported by the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Centre. We want to prevent such situations in the future. DTEK will distribute the information leaflets to all the areas of its operations – Kurakhovo, Kirovskoye, Zugres, Mironovskoye, Mospino, Schastye, Rovenky and Sverdlovsk. Also, DTEK will engage the State Emergency Service to give ad hoc lessons at 69 schools and launch an awareness campaign with DTEK employees and their families.

In addition, DTEK will deliver lectures and targeted work with foster homes and family-type care facilities. The company will also disseminate brochures and posters in crowded areas, social and utility facilities of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. 

The Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Centre and DTEK call on media and volunteers to help and distribute this important information and report all accidents that injure children in the ATO area – the Humanitarian Centre will help to treat them and provide psychological help.  

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The Humanitarian Centre “Aid + Help” of Rinat Akhmetov Foundation has four key missions: evacuating people from the war zone; accommodating the internally displaced people; supplying the humanitarian and medical aid; and rendering targeted help.

You can contact the Humanitarian Centre at a toll-free multichannel hotline 0 800 50 9001 and athelpdonbass@fdu.org.ua.