A project for Street Children
in Odessa, Ukraine

 
 
 

 


 

You have reached the website for This Child Here.... I am Robert Gamble, director of the non-profit This Child Here and a minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA); I live and work in Odessa, Ukraine with programs designed to help children move from street life to life in shelters, homes or orphanages, and to help, to encourage, and to inspire children in those facilities.

 

THE SITUATION

The best estimates are 140,000 children live on the streets of Ukraine. In a country with a population of fifty million, it may seem a small percentage, but the number is still staggering. Street children survive by living in groups with their own laws. They carry things, beg, steal, and become prostitutes to make money. They don't go to school; they have no time, no friends and no documentation. When they are not begging or making money or sleeping, some inject themselves with drug store chemicals or squirt glue into a plastic bag and inhale.


children on the street