Gordon and Lila Craddock, Heart4Children Canada
On Tuesday, we heard from Gordon and Lila Craddock, pictured, of Devon, speaking about their work with Heart4Childen Canada. Heart4Children Canada has been affiliated with the Christian Hope Church in Kiev, Ukraine for seventeen years. The church was established in 1991 with help from some churches in Norway. Lila and Gordon heard about this mission and first visited in 1999, to witness the plight of the many children living on the streets of Kiev, in the sewers and under buildings. Their parents had fallen into poverty, drug and alcohol abuse after the independence of the Ukraine from Russia, and these children were left to fend for themselves on the streets. They decided to help as best they could and set up a registered Canadian charity to help contribute to this effort.
Neither Gordon nor Lila has Ukrainian heritage, nor do they speak the language. The Heart4Children program in the Ukraine is currently administered by two people, Sasha and Gayane, who work closely with the Christian Hope Church and it’s pastor Valerie, to provide all kinds of programs. They raise most of their funds from various groups in Alberta and BC.
Gordon and Laila Craddock
They first became involved by helping to support the Christian Hope Children’s Rehab Center in Kiev. They worked with the street children, and encouraged them to come to the Rehab Center to live. The government run orphanages were very poorly run and had a very bad reputation. The Christian Hope Children’s Rehab Center was an orphanage that supported thirty-five children who had previously been living on the streets. Unfortunately, the orphanage was forced to close in 2011 when the Ukrainian government took over their land.
In 2013 they purchased land and built Mercy House, a summer camp, for these street children near the Black Sea coast in Crimea. For several years, they sponsored camps though-out the summer months, that gave these children another view of life, from living on the streets. Unfortunately, the camp was forced to close in Aug 2016 when Russia took over Crimea. It was no longer safe for families to send their children to this summer camp. Sasha and Gayane made a trip to the camp to clean, make repairs and get the proper ownership paperwork in place, and had to try three times to be able to get back across the border into Ukraine. Officials questioned them separately and for many hours before letting them back in. Any sale of property in Crimea by people from the Ukraine is not considered to be legal, by the Ukrainian government, so Heart4 Children is hoping to be able to make some kind of an exchange for the camp in Crimea, for a similar camp near the mountains west of Kiev.
Heart4Children also supports refugee families that have been displaced to the Kiev region from Eastern Ukraine by the recent fighting there. They help by providing food packages, clothing, medicine and other types of humanitarian aid.
In addition, they work to support people from the small village of Zhmeoyvka, near Chernobyl, several hours north of Kiev. The village has a small daughter church of the Christian Hope Church in Kiev. The village is so small they have no grocery or supply store, and the people are too poor to afford transportation. Heart4Children makes many trips each year to bring food, summer and winter clothing, school supplies, craft supplies, and special treats such as fresh fruit, candy and Christmas gifts. They have also sponsored summer camps for the children of Zhmeoyvka.
Heart4Children has seen many changes over the past seventeen years, but they are still going strong, and still have hope for a better future for the people that they have committed to help, any way they can.