Germans Help Talented Ukrainian Girl

Eleven-year-old Liuda Boiko from Uzhhorod excels at playing the violin and painting. She also walked away with first prize at Believe in Yourself festival, an all-expense-paid trip to Artek, a famous summer camp in the Crimea. The action was organized by the Social Service Department of the Zakarpattia Oblast State Administration.

“Then,” recalls Vasylyna Marko, head of the Uzhhorod Association of disabled workers and children, “I promised we would come up with a present too, although I had no financial grounds for making such a statement, only confidence that God would provide.”

“And so He did, as Director General of Germany’s Henkel Company Peter Zimmel became a partner in our program called Support for Talented Children. This firm, specializing in the production of household detergents, is in the first place known for its compassion. When company representatives saw that the family of the prodigy share a room crammed with five beds, they put their heads together and decided to buy them an apartment. They bought a three-room suite on the ground floor, as Liuda suffers from infantile cerebral paralysis.”

“We renovated the apartment, furnished it, bought a television set,” says Oleh Adamachuk, Henkel Uzhhorod manager, “and paid utility bills two years in advance, so that Mayor Stepan Sember does not complain that we got him yet another deadbeat.”

“Our representatives have made 120 similar presents to gifted children across Ukraine,” Peter Zimmel told The Day. Germans understand that children are the planet’s future. Sooner or later Ukrainians will come to realize this too, reports Vasyl ZUBACH, Uzhhorod.