Unique methods and philanthropy help return thousands of physically handicapped children to a full life

“Right, take another step, now try it again,” says a young woman, repeating the phrase as though it were an incantation, supporting with one hand a seven-year-old boy clad in a something that reminds one of a spacesuit. They are in a corridor and the boy struggles to take every step on weak disobedient legs. He looks somber and concentrated, but now and then he smiles shyly. “See, we’re walking. Nobody would have believed it, but we are,” his mother informs me happily. Her son, like many other patients of the Odesa Children’s Rehabilitation Center under the Maibutnie [Future] Regional Foundation, received the formidable diagnosis of infantile cerebral paralysis. It affects the cerebral cortex, so the brain gives the body the wrong kind of commands. Individuals thus afflicted, even with a high IQ, find themselves unable to stand, sit, speak, or walk like other people. ICP is generally considered incurable. Even in the developed countries ICP children are doomed to a vegetable existence, even if provided with the best possible conditions as inmates of special institutions. “I have visited such institutions in America, Japan, and Israel,” says Borys Lytvak, founder of the center and president of the Maibutnie Foundation, “They have religious believers in government, and all such intuitions for physically handicapped children are modern equipped, but they are meant to provide conditions for dying comfortably, not living. We want to make every effort to return such children back to normal, to adjust them to normal life.” Everything at the center is done in keeping with this strategy, including “pressure suits” — developed by Russian scientists to help restore body movements after space missions — massage baths and physiotherapy gyms with absolutely fantastic equipment. And unique personnel composed of topnotch physicians and teachers. Also there is a real miniature drama company where children stage plays together with adults, where they learn to recite rhymed lines for the first time in their lives to a standing ovation.

There is an art studio and an art gallery. When there is no room left for pictures, they are hung on the walls outside and from doors to treatment rooms. Physicians say that when a group of children was brought from Chechnya it included a boy who kept silent, sketching tanks and explosions. After two weeks at the center he began sketching flowers and the sun. That was five years ago. This author found the following entries in the guest book:

“We learned to take our first steps last February. Then we forgot all about crutches and canes. My Beloved, how could you endure my tears, despair, my repeated question whether my son Viktor would live? My son, an athlete and a soccer player, was crippled by a terrible traffic accident. With your help we overcame all our problems, and we now have the most fantastic plans. I bow low before your kindness, patience, and utmost professionalism. [Signed] Mother of Viktor Tarasenko.”

A new entry by the same lady a year later:

“We have long considered the center as our second home. That period when Viktor and I struggled to overcome our despair, when every step he struggled to take was an exploit, seems so faraway now. All the dreams we cherished in our new home you created for us have come true. My Viktor danced by the Christmas tree. And he is so proud that his drawings are displayed at your exhibit! Now he will sketch not only dark cars under dark skies, but also the sun, mountains, and flowers. I wish to thank all those who gave us medical treatment, who shared their love with us, who came to help the instant we needed it.”

Last fall, the Children’s Rehabilitation Center opened a computer center, available free of charge, meant to complete the little patients’ medical as well as social adaptation. “I can’t even remember who was the first to come out with the idea,” says Borys Lytvak, “as we previously wanted to convert a basement into a workshop where our children would learn to make frames for pictures, easels, learning crafts they’d be able to use later to earn a living. But then it dawned on us that we were in the computer age. Operating software did not require strong legs and hands. Only intellect. We hurried to implement the idea, and there were people to help us. Now we have it: the computer center, the best we could have ever conceived for our children.” Just like that, quick and easy. They had an idea and then they had people willing to help. And now they have the world’s only facility helping save human souls and bodies. In the seven years of its existence, the Odesa Center has treated (free of charge!) 12,000 physically handicapped children from all over Ukraine, also from Moldavia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and elsewhere.

THERE WERE THOSE WILLING TO HELP

This is Borys Lytvak’s pet phrase. He uses it whenever asked how you people have managed all this. It should be noted that this building with an angel should not have existed by all the laws of human physics. It was erected without any government subsides and grants from the West, but assisted by dozens of Odesites who supported the idea of the center, above all by a unique personality known not only in Odesa but far beyond the borders of Ukraine: Borys D. Lytvak, then principal of a sports school. He had had a daughter, Iryna; he loved her more than anything else in this world, but she was destined to die young, leaving behind a son and the idea of setting up a boarding home for physically handicapped children. “Shortly before her passing,” he recalls, “Iryna said, daddy, you’re training the strongest and healthiest boys that will find a place under the sun even without your assistance. But who will take care of the weak and afflicted, people that can do nothing without aid? You should help them. It was her last will. She set a task for me before departing this world, so everything I’m doing is to carry out her will.”

At the outset of the project, he was offered help from Baltimore, Odesa’s American twin city, but they eventually changed their mind. Ukraine in general, and Odesa in particular, could not afford it — meaning there were funds, but not for the center. It was then, says Borys Lytvak, that people emerged willing to help: “Some of my former students came, along with other well-wishing individuals, offering help. They proceeded to work free of charge. Hurvits, the former mayor of Odesa, allocated 50,000 hryvnias of budget funds.” They built the center as though it were a temple, passing the hat around and receiving aid. And then the center had its own theater, thanks to a friend of mine, the noted Georgian stage director Rezo Gabriadze. Mykhailo Reva, a distinguished Ukrainian architect, presented the center with a statue of an angel now embellishing the bay window. Another prominent architect, Ernst Neizvestny, contributed the gold leaf that now covers the angel. There is, however, another donator’s name revered by the center’s staff: a retired lady by the name of Oleksandra V. Zadvorna. “Once a group of girls visited the center, bringing $100,” he explains, “saying the money was from an elderly woman and that she had said it was for the center, but that she had not identified herself. It took me time and effort to locate her. I asked if there was anything I could do to help. She said she needed a truck and a couple of hefty young fellows to help her move her furniture to her daughter’s place. I sent what she needed the very next day. That same evening the truck arrived with a piano, a package of cookies, and a jar of jam, Oleksandra Zadvorna’s gifts for the theater. So that was what she had actually needed the vehicle and hefty fellows for.” Every visitor can read the donors’ names on a huge billboard in the center lobby. Beneath is the legend: “The Center was built and lives thanks to these people.”

STATESMEN AND BUREAUCRATS

Neither the Children’s Rehabilitation Center, nor its head Borys Lytvak have enjoyed special favors from the local powers that be, although a number of VIPs have visited the premises over the past seven years, among them Ukraine’s First Lady Liudmyla Kuchma, a visit they would remember long afterward.

Among the ranking guests was Yegor Stroyev, Governor of the Orlov gubernia in Russia. He planted a tree of life in the computer center’s patio. The US ambassador and his wife also visited. Odesa Mayor Ruslan Bodelan is the only local dignitary that has never set foot on the center premises. He and Borys Lytvak, deputy of the city council, have not been able to come to terms with us from the outset. Ruslan Bodelan started his career as mayor of Odesa by crossing out UAH 50,000 as the city budget’s annual subsidy allocated by his predecessor for the center to provide for medications. The mayor’s office has not directed a single humanitarian mission to visit Odesa to the Children’s Rehabilitation Center. Regensburg, Odesa’s twin city in Germany, is the only exception. Their aid is always addressed to the center. And the confrontation between Borys Lytvak and Mayor Ruslan Bodelan has reached its peak. The mayor’s office and affiliated municipal authorities have bluntly refused to allow the Children’s Rehabilitation Center to take possession of a nearby daycare center to convert into a hostel for children and parents arriving from other places to take courses of treatment, something Odesa’s CRC has long and badly needed.

In fact, the conversion idea was supported by the Ukrainian Minister of Labor and Social Policy who further undertook to finance the repair and maintenance of the hostel. But with one reservation: the money would have to be received not from the city, but from the oblast administrative region. The US ambassador’s wife and the governor of Odesa oblast requested the mayor of Odesa that he assist the project. No response. Lidiya Stetsko, head of the city administration of education, was the only official succeeding in receiving a more or comprehensible explanation of the refusal: “Half of the daycare centers in this city are in apartment buildings with flaking plaster and faulty water supply systems. The daycare center requested by Lytvak could be considered as an exemplary one, so it must remain municipal property. We will repair it using our own resources and it will become available to children by September 1 (one wonders why nothing like that had been done previously —Author). The said center, therefore, should look for hostel premises elsewhere.” The city council passed a resolution also coming down to the same proposal: Look for premises elsewhere and then we’ll consider your option. It was though Borys Lytvak wanted to have the hostel as his private business.

This author has long realized that it is no use trying to find a logical explanations for decisions made by certain officials. Their motivation is entirely different, perhaps owing to who is involved in or with what. Borys Lytvak cuts a singular figure, as unique as his building with an angel. He personifies that old genuine Odesa sought by tourists arriving from all over the world. A unique, talented, and freedom-loving city — inconvenient as it is for its current mayor. It is also true, however, that time will dot all the i’s, so everyone will be allocated his proper place in history.