Orphan girl Vera Ch. is an Israeli citizen and is going to be an architect

When one helps olim fulfil their dreams it is a very pleasant feeling. Yet one may be purely happy lending a helping hand to an orphan.

Vera Ch. from Energodar, Ukraine, joined the orphans’ program of the fund PWC in 2008. It was a year since Vera’s mother died of cancer. Nine years before Vera’s parents divorced, but Vera still remembered the dreadful life before their divorce. That is why when her mother died, Vera stayed with her step-father, mother’s second husband, and not with her own father. Vera was strictly against moving to her father’s place. Vera’s father’s alcohol addiction was the reason to deprive him of parental rights. Vera’s step-father was her guardian whom she calls father and who helped her make her dream of Israel come true.

Vera’s grandfather Yakov Epshtein has lived in Israeli Kiryat-Ata, for 40 years.  

Vera, his beloved grandchild, regularly spent her vacations with her grandfather. Israel has been Vera’s long-cherished dream. She was just in love with the fair land, her historical motherland.

Vera’s Jewishness is halakic, and she has all rights to repatriate. Yet, there was a man who was all against her departure to the Promised Land. Without her permission Vera could not leave, and the most painful thing for Vera was that it was her own father. For several years he has been refusing to let Vera repatriate. We needed to take much pain and to have numerous talks with him till he gave way.

 All through those long negotiations Vera needed psychological support. The fund PWC invited Vera to attend each event for orphan children. Vera had a great time with them. She needed support and feeling of being loved; and the rest of children felt a great attraction: she was the only one of them who ever visited Israel.

For them, it meant that Israel was not a fair land from the tales told by the employee of the fund PWC Marina Tuler. It was a real state, a wonderful country where they could leave for and where they could be well and cared of.

Vera was glad to share her impressions on the distant and so wonderful Promised Land, and the orphans listened to her with great attention. They all were bound with the same dream – to live in Israel.

Vera celebrated her seventeenth birthday with the fund PWC. It concurred with another orphan’s birthday – Spartak’s. It was a double celebration. The money for this celebration we received from Tony and Kath Rose from the UK. We thought, the orphans would be interested in people giving them presents, and we placed a large picture of Tony and Kath onto a TV-screen. The orphan’s reaction was a surprise for us. The children smiled at the picture and tried to reach out and touch Tony and Kath.
Children were hungry for love and they were bathing in the caress of Tony’s and Kath’s radiant smiles. At the moment for the children they were not mythical donors but real people who gave the orphans what they needed most – care and warmth.

The climax of the celebration was when birthday cakes and presents were brought in.

As everybody at the festive dinner, Vera was enjoying the dishes gifts, care and attention.

Sadly, those were the days when the Director of “Exobus” Phil Hunter was seriously ill. It was thanks to his care that the orphans’ program existed. That is why the fund PWC and the orphan children prepared a special thank for him. We hoped this thank was pleasant for him, and that now, in another life, he is rejoiced at the happiness of the orphans he once helped.

Vera knows the price of such help like nobody else.
Her gladness was boundless when she finally got her father’s permission for departure to Israel – got it fought and won. And here is the happy Vera receiving a money aid for her departure to Israel.

In a few months, early in 2009, employees of the PWC visited Vera in a JAFI schooling complex in Nazrat-Ilit, Israel. There Vera spent 7 months studying Hebrew, English and obtaining other basic skills for her future studying in Israel.

Vera was happy to meet the employees of the fund, and she was pleased to get “A Pleasing Surprise” - €100 from donors.

Vera’s eyes shone with happiness: her long-cherished dream
was so near-at-hand, so close to reach out and take it –
she wanted to become an architect.

We dared to doubt – was not the rank the orphan wanted to reach too high? However, Vera was absolutely confident: “I will do it”.
And she really did! Her persistency and commitment are adorable. She never lost time. After the end of the program Vera entered the preparation course in Tekhnion in Haifa. There she mastered Hebrew and English and was good at the examinations, and it gave her all the chances to enter Tekhnion. Here is the letter about it Vera left after the meeting with the fund PWC on August 27, 2011.

Hello!
I am Vera Chirka. I want to thank you for your help in my Aliyah. I have been in Israel for 3 years. I arrived on JAFI program, studied Maths and English in an ulpan. Then I entered Tekhnion passed the psychometry and was accepted at the department of architecture. Now I have completed my first year and visited Ukraine where I met Tatiana from “People Who Care”. I had a chance to thank everybody who helped me, whose timely support let me enter this path in my life.
Vera. 27.08.2011.

During the meeting, we asked Vera on her life in Israel and plans for future. Vera is happy there. She enjoys her life in Israel, being the citizen of the state and is planning her life as a citizen of Israel.
She has been dreaming of it for so long!

Though Vera has completed only the first year of studying at Tekhnion, she has already made a contract with the Israeli Defense Forces that after her graduation she would be an architect for the IDF for 5 years.
This would give her job right after graduation, and experience as well. Besides that, this work will be taken into account of her service in the army. Yet, Vera is learning the basic details of the military science in a special youth camp.

Vera is very happy in Israel. She is a citizen, she studies in Tekhnion and is going to fulfil her dream of being an architect in Israel.
Another important point is that in Israel she met her love! She has a loving and beloved and reliable one in Israel!

We hope that all the positive moments in Vera’s life would help her heal the wounds in her soul: mother’s death, father’s treachery. During her visit to Ukraine, Vera stayed at her step-father’s. When we asked Vera if she met her own father, Vera said: “I see him not too often. When he is drunk he phones me. It is so painful for me. It is unpleasant for me to hear his voice and I do not want to see him. I knew much pain, and there is a part of his guilt in my mother’s untimely death”.
It is so hard to live with such pain in one’s heart. Vera needs support, and how good it is that Vera has people who support her and help her dreams come true.
Vera is thankful for such support. And the fund PWC as usually, gave Vera presents:

comfortable, bright and brand-new trainers from the humanity aid rendered to the fund

and “A Pleasing Surprise” - €40 from donors.

We wanted the orphan girl to feel pleased after her visit to the fund “People Who Care” and to feel the love we have always had for her.

Many thanks to our donors who contributed into the happy life of Vera Chirka!