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This year for the first time, our fortunate, happy family (Rachel, Paddy, Hazel, Gemma and Jodie) are opening our home and our hearts to a little girl from the Mogilev region of Belarus - an area still heavily contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear fallout from the 1986 disaster. She will come to stay with us for a month a year for the next 5 years (Valya is currently 7 years old).

The Easingwold Group of Friends of Chernobyl's Children each year bring a group of Belarusian children, typically aged from 7 to 12 years old, away from the contaminated environment to detoxify their immune systems, to give them a break from often desperate domestic conditions and to provide any further support with health problems (normally through dental, optical and health checks). The children stay with host families like us for a full month. During the day they experience a wonderful programme of visits, education and activities. In the evenings and at weekends they are a full part of our family, given lots of tender loving care.

When the children go home they are healthier, more confident and full of enthusiasm for all the new experiences they have enjoyed during the visit. Their suitcases, empty when they arrive, are filled to bursting with warm clothes, shoes, toiletries, vitamin pills and other items to help them and their siblings. They return to their normal lives, eager to share their experience with their friends and families back in Belarus, knowing they have other people who care for them, future visits to look forward to and that the world and their future has more possibility than they could previously imagined.

It costs between £10,000 to £12,000 a year to pay for the transport and visa costs of bringing a group of 12 children and two interpreters across. We're all busy fundraising in whatever way we can - every little helps, so PLEASE PLEASE support us in giving these children a brighter future.

Here's an extract from the main Friends of Chernobyl's Children website:

Children of Chernobyl

Through direct exposure from the atmosphere and

Thyroid patients receive medicine at the Radiation Medicine clinic near Minsk

indirect exposure through the food chain, children in the Chernobyl area received a dose of radiation 40 times above permissible levels. The number of incidences of thyroid cancer is up 3000 per cent and it is estimated that over the next 15-20 years over 40,000 children in Belarus will contract the disease.

In Belarus cancer of the thyroid is so prevalent that the scar left after a thyroid operation is now chillingly referred to as a Belarussian Necklace, thus marking them forever as Chernobyl's victims.

Since the disaster there has also been an increase of 800% in the incidence of cancers in children living near to the reactor plus there has been a dramatic increase in the rate of babies born with substantial physical disabilities. Babies born limbless, deformed and with severe brain damage.

There are so many other radiation related health crises occurring in the region that for the first time in Belarussian history , the death rate is HIGHER, than the birth rate.

Treatment of disease is difficult in Belarus due to the lack of proper medication and equipment. The breakdown of the countries infrastructure, both politically and economically has caused inflation to rise at a rapid rate. Western goods are available in the shops but at prices well beyond the spending limit of the average Belarussian.  Recent research show that over 90% of children suffer from vitamin deficiency and many die through the lack of proper treatment that can be afforded to them.

In excess of 80,000 children have very little hope in life due to a disaster of someone else's making. Our aim is to relieve this suffering.