FAB – Faith in Action for Belarus
Registered Charity No. 1091593
Trustees: Laura Ashcroft, Alan Chester, Angela Duckworth, Kevin Ainscough, Hazel Mackenzie
About us:
Every year FAB invites 10 children and 1 translator over to the UK for a 2 week respite holiday. This gives the children the chance to rid their bodies of radioactive substances and to breathe clean air and eat uncontaminated fruit and vegetables. This opportunity increases the life expectancy of each child by 2 years!
The children are hosted by families for the 2 weeks and follow a programme of activities offering cultural and educational experiences, not to mention a great deal of fun.
The children will be visiting us from 27th July 2009 for 2 weeks.
FAB aims:
- FAB aims to bring a group of children over to the UK annually for a respite holiday.
- Provide Christian homes where each child can receive Godly care and prayer support.
- Provide a holiday of a lifetime experience for the children to remember forever.
- To give the people of Belarus some hope for the future of their children, who will in turn bring hope for the future of their nation?
FAB is a Christian organisation with a mission statement based on the following Bible verses:
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?
James 2 v 14 – 16
Then the King will say to those on His right hand, “Come you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for when I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.
Matthew 25 v 34 – 36
Background:
On the 26th April 1986, Chernobyl’s number four reactor exploded, spewing a cloud of radioactive material across a huge area of Eastern Europe in the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster. The fallout was 500 times the amount of that released by the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Thirty people were killed immediately and more than 15000 people died in the emergency clear up.
Altogether around 3.5 million people, over a third of them children, are believed to have suffered illnesses as a result of radioactive contamination and United Nations figures show that millions still live on contaminated land. But the real scale of the catastrophe, which displaced hundreds of thousands of people and turned villages and towns into ghost communities, turned out to be far greater.
Today two leading Belarusian scientists say the effects of that radiation are more serious than ever predicted. They have linked cesium, which was spewed out by the reactor to heart and kidney problems, eye cataracts and abnormalities in the nervous and digestive systems. However, the greatest problem lies in the huge increase of thyroid cancer especially in the children of Belarus. The form it takes is of a particularly aggressive nature and there are many fatalities because of it.
In addition to these health problems, almost the entire population of Belarus lives in abject poverty, making it virtually impossible to get adequate food supplies or any forms of vitamins or mineral supplements which their contaminated systems so desperately need. Even though this disaster took place in the Ukraine, Belarus got the full force of its wrath simply because of the way the wind was blowing on that particular day.
About the Children:
The children come mainly from a school in the village of Lyushchitsy. The children who have been very good or have attained excellent results are chosen to come each year.
For further information or to make a donation, please contact Laura Ashcroft or Angela Duckworth through Kingsway Fellowship or go to their website link at the top this page.