Story by Hal Goodtree | August 17, 2010 | Tags: Community, Faiths, News, Sports
Story by Hal Goodtree.
Cary, NC – To the casual observer, it just looked like a bunch of kids running around in the sunshine, practicing soccer drills with a young coach.
But a closer look revealed the tie-dyed shirts were in Cyrillic. And the coach was barking orders in English and Ukranian.
Turns out the coach was Railhawks player Andriy Budnyy. And the kids: Ukrainian orphans.
Not So Good At Home
The kids had been brought to the Triangle by Hope Community Church as part of the Redline United program.
Michele Clifton told me that the children come from three different orphanages and a variety of distressing backgrounds. Even more distressing: at 16, they’re basically kicked out for a life of living on the street, crime or prostitution.
From Redline United:
“Seventy percent of boys end up going to prison and 60 percent of girls end up in prostitution,” Redline Volunteer Eleni Lobene explained. “And 10 percent of all the children who leave the orphanage at 16 end up committing suicide.”
Redline states that the children can live up to thirteen in a room in the Ukrainian orphanages. One shower a week is common.
“It’s hard to describe,” Lobene said when talking about the orphanages. “Basically the one thing that stands out to me is, it’s not very clean, and they do their best to keep it clean. But when you have 200 children in an orphanage with limited supervision, the children — imagine Lord of the Flies almost.”
Fun in NC and Maybe More
More than a dozen children between 9 and 15 visited the Triangle for three weeks, staying with host families.
They learned a little English, studied the Bible, went to the beach and the zoo.
Redline is working to get as many of the kids adopted as possible. According to the organization, “The children don’t know the real reason they are here. Most of them however, are spoken for by local families.”
Railhawks Star Gets Involved
Railhawks forward Andriy Budnyy with Ukranian kids. Photo by Tom Mousseau.
Railhawks forward Andriy Budnyy hails from Chernivtsi, Ukraine. He heard about the orphan’s trip at Hope Community Church where he is a parishioner. “I wanted to do something,” he told me.
The Railhawks star organized a soccer clinic at WakeMed Soccer Park for the Ukrainian boys and the children of their American hosts. The Ukrainian girls spent the time at a spa in Raleigh.
I watched Budnyy calling out orders in two languages and running drills that encouraged the Ukrainian kids and their American counterparts to interact and play together.
Andriy Budnyy has spent the better part of the last seven years in America, attending Bard College and San Jose State. This is his second season with the Railhawks, but he hasn’t forgotten his homeland.
“I was just glad to help these kids out,” Budnyy said.
Ukrainian kids and their American friends at WakeMed Soccer Park. Photo by Hal Goodtree.
