Lodz Airport: Letter to Aviation Society

Dear Aviation Friends,

The tragic events that are currently taking place right next to our borders, requires the sacrifice that our society has not been ready for. Lodz Airport Central Poland for many years cooperates supports and assists the Happy Kids Foundation which has over 20 years of experience in comprehensive help of disadvantaged and lonely children and now is facing the challenge of the preservation of children's lives and health in the face of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The Happy Kids Foundation, with cooperation and full support of Hanna Zdanowska – Mayor of the Lodz City, the main shareholder of Lodz Airport Central Poland launched a campaign on the second day of the war to rescue some of the most vulnerable victims: children from orphanages and foster care. There are over 100,000 children in institutional, public orphanages in Ukraine.

Happy Kids Foundation is evacuating children and families from the war-affected parts of Ukraine now. They have already evacuated and taken care of over 2,500 people in Poland placing them in well prepared/rented places where they may stay in dignity and safety for at least several months. More than half of them are children of Ukrainian orphanages.

All those actions are fully financed from their resources received from people of goodwill and companies whose activity is based on the CSR business model. While the situation is getting more and more difficult we would like to friendly ask you our Aviation Friends to support the Happy Kids Foundation in any way you can afford to.  The needs now are huge and time matters.

It might be either financial support or support by your contacts to similar organisations in your countries. Also, any help to find places to stay that will enable the evacuated children to live there and to have a decent existence is highly appreciated. Happy Kids need free places in functioning children's homes, hotels, sanatoriums, dormitories, etc. These places must enable them to provide at least several months of accommodation and full board for their charges and their careers. In each case, it is also indispensable to be supervised by local or provincial government agencies profiled for this purpose - Municipal Social Assistance Centres, Family Assistance Centres, Foster Care Administration Centres, etc.

Also, any other help that from your perspective might be possible is more than welcome.

If you find financial support possible then donations made will be used for both immediate needs: transport, food, cleaning supplies, clothing - as well as specialist medical treatment, psychological therapy, and legal care. On the Happy Kids Foundation website - https://www.happykids.org.pl/?lang=en, you will find all possible information on how to transfer payments.

The person whom you may contact to receive more detailed information is Radosław Wiśniewski, Happy Kids Chairman of the Council - +48 605 219 578, Radoslaw.Wisniewski@redan.com.pl

Current activity reports and updated information are also  published on: https://www.facebook.com/fundacjahappykids

Thank you very much for your understanding. Stay safe and strong.

PhD Ania Midera, President of the Board and CEO of Lodz Airport Central Poland

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MORE ABOUT HAPPY KIDS FOUNDATION ACTIVITY:

In recent days, the Foundation has taken over (casually and because of the need of the moment) the function of a ‘national leader’' of the process of evacuation of children staying in orphanages in Ukraine. This has happened due to the scale of its activities as well the delayed constructive response of the government agents created for this purpose.

Since the beginning of the war, they have been involved in rescuing thousands of wards (including those with dysfunctions and disabilities). They cooperated with carers from orphanages in Kharkiv, Kherson, Lviv, Kyiv, Odesa, Poltava, Zhytomyr and the Volhynian region. The youngest of the survivors were under one year old.  Almost two thousand children directly evacuated by the Foundation are already in Poland in places that meet all the necessary standards, organised not only in central Poland but in many regions in Poland.

The Happy Kids Foundation conducts evacuation of children in close cooperation with the Department of Child Rights Protection and Adoption of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine. As the Polish Government becomes more and more proactive, they try to develop their cooperation with the Ministry of Family and Social Policy of the Republic of Poland. Together with the City of Łódź Happy Kids organisation significantly coordinates the relocation of children throughout the country in consultation with local governments.

Working together with international aid organisations, the Happy Kids Foundation also aims to build humanitarian bridges to provide care for some of the evacuees in other EU countries, which could be fundamentally important in a further escalation of the conflict. The Happy Kids Foundation has been supported, among others, by the world's largest United Nations initiative for sustainable business: the UN Global Compact Network, which both mobilises private sector entities to provide long-term assistance and responds to current crises.

The process of evacuating thousands of Ukrainian children from orphanages and care by the Happy Kids Foundation involves, on the one hand:

• locating children's orphanages, foster families, or other forms of care in Ukraine that require immediate evacuation from war zones,
• assistance in reaching the Ukrainian-Polish border,
• the efficient takeover of evacuated children from reception points at the border checkpoints.

on the other hand, it involves:

• acquiring places for at least medium-term stay that meet the appropriate housing conditions and are adapted to the needs of evacuated groups of children, to create conditions that are not worse than those in which they previously functioned,
• cooperating with local authorities to look after victims of war, maintaining the required support and supervision procedures,
• organising transport throughout the country,
• ongoing monitoring of the situation of children in the new places by maintaining relations with the organisers of the institutions and supporting their activities in minimising the effects of the trauma experienced by children,
• providing necessary psychological, medical, legal, and other assistance,
• meeting the material needs of the children in care.

Due to the intensity of military operations and the cruelty of the Russian aggressor towards Ukrainian civilians, their efforts are focused on rescuing as many children as possible in the shortest possible time. It is worth emphasising that Happy Kids Foundation is dealing with extremely fragile and defenceless beings, which poses an additional difficulty in the evacuation process and unfortunately requires specialised expertise.  

The Happy Kids Foundation team's many years of experience, expertise in the field of foster care and effective response to humanitarian crises, as well as international contacts with organisations working for the benefit of children, make it possible, in parallel, for the Foundation to take further steps towards developing a systemic solution to the problem of children of war: creating a model based on real, long-term and comprehensive care for children, with the involvement of public services, social workers and specialised NGOs.

The Happy Kids Foundation takes advantage of over 20 years of experience in comprehensive support of disadvantaged and lonely children. Happy Kids’ systemic supportive activities and, among others, 17 family orphanages of the Foundation are proof that it is possible to change the fate of children in an effective way so that they can function in the future on equal terms with their peers growing up in typical biological families.