Background:
The charity “Pilgrim” began over ten years ago with the efforts of a simple Ukrainian pastor who was overcome by the plight of the street children in his city. His ministry to street children started out small—at first, he and people from his church would take food to the children in the evenings. Later, they found an old abandoned building that the kids could sleep in. They were able to purchase the building and remodel it into a home for street children. Those small beginnings have transformed into what is now the largest rehabilitation program in the territory of the former USSR.
The rehabilitation home, called the “Republic of the Pilgrim,” is the only one of its type and is home to over seventy adolescents with extremely complicated social, emotional, and physical problems. These are the kids of basements and streets; the overwhelming majority of them have a real and often very deep drug addiction. Not a small percentage of the children are HIV positive. Over the past eight years, about 2,500 adolescents passed through the rehab course here.
Together with the children’s rehab, Pilgrim also hosts a network of rehabilitation centers for adult drug addicts. Having started at the “Church of Good Changes” in Mariupol, this project developed dynamically and has already expanded to 30 regions in Ukraine and Russia. More than 400 adult addicts are presently going through rehabilitation, and several thousand people have returned to normal life from the trap of drug addiction as a result of this ministry. In addition to returning to normal life, many of the former drug addicts and street children have become believers in Christ through the ministry and are now active participants and leaders in the Church of Good Changes. Their current worship leader is a very talented young man who spent numerous years of his life living on the streets before coming into their children’s rehabilitation center.
Current Projects:
As seen from the background section, Pilgrim works in a wide variety of spheres. In 2007, the leadership of Pilgrim came to the realization that a rehabilitation center for street children was insufficient for addressing the needs of some of them and that what they really needed was a family. Therefore, the leaders began to talk with members of their church to find interested foster families. So far this year they have opened three foster homes—one of which took thirteen children, another eight, and another four. Pilgrim fund was able to get sponsors to purchase homes for each of these three families. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done on each of these three houses, but the children who live in them are very happy to be able to have a home and family. The parents who took in the children are all strong believers and also were all at one point staff members at the children’s rehabilitation center “Republic Pilgrim” and so they have years of experience working with children from a similar background.
One of these foster families stands out from all the others because they adopted two HIV positive children. In 2007, they became the first family in the country of Ukraine to adopt an HIV positive child. There was much controversy surrounding their adoption, and they spent nine long months attempting to overcome bureaucratic obstacles. Six judges denied them the right to adopt the child, and only on the seventh attempt were they able to find a judge who was willing to agree to let them adopt four-year-old Nikita. Nikita has done very well in their home—so well that in May of this year, they decided to also bring HIV positive nine year old Peter into their family. They are currently in the process of trying to adopt two more HIV positive children.
For more information about this powerful ministry, please visit www.republicpilgrim.org
