Alla Soroka inspired by opportunity to participate in Peacemaking program
by Scott O’Neill | Presbyterian News Service
Alla Soroka will be traveling the U.S. this fall as a 2017 International Peacemaker. (Photo provided)
LOUISVILLE – Although she never planned it as her life’s vocation, Alla Soroka has been actively working with at-risk children since 2005. She found her passion, and her trust in God, working with teenage prisoners, children and orphans living in the streets of her native Odessa, Ukraine. She will be sharing some of her experiences this fall (Sept. 22 – Oct. 16) traveling to selected Presbyterian churches, universities, and theological institutions in the United States as a 2017 International Peacemaker.
The challenges Ms. Soroka faces in Ukraine have roots that go back nearly a century to her country’s communist heritage. A sovereign state in Eastern Europe, Ukraine is bordered by Russia to the east and saw its territories consolidated into the Soviet Republic in 1922. It gained its independence after the end of the Cold War in 1991, but the communist mindset is still very much alive.