ABRO

[America Belarussian Relief Organization]

From its inception over 30 years ago, ABRO has offered relief to children living in regions contaminated by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Over those years, nearly 20,000 children have participated in family-style retreats, learned computer skills, attended camps in uncontaminated areas and received medical and dental care.

Most of these children participated in summer programs which brought them to the United States to live with American families for six weeks. This gave them respite from radiation which allowed their immune systems to significantly recover.

Present Realities

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and with war raging in Ukraine, most of these efforts have ended. For the past three years, we have been unable to bring children to the states.

Most funding for ABRO was dependent on administrative fees generated by the summer 6-week respite program. With the inability to bring children here, we’ve watched our resources rapidly being depleted. We’ve had to make hard decisions, one of them, unfortunately, being the elimination of our executive director position.

Continuing the work in Belarus

Despite these setbacks, ABRO continues to serve children in Belarus. Through the efforts of our Belarusian team and partner churches in the U.S., we have conducted VBS’s and camps for the past two years and will do so again in the summer of 2023.

The costs for the 2023 summer programs are as follows:

Children’s camp $150
Young adult camp $30
VBS in Mogilev $125
VBS in Gomel $20

We invite you to donate to these efforts to share the gospel and enrich the lives of Belarusian children and young adults.

100 percent of the gifts we receive will go to the projects. There are no administrative fees.

Any funds collected that exceed what is needed for the summer of 2023 program will be used to help fund additional projects, such as Christmas parties, later in the year.