Shade for Children General Fund

We're thankful for continued support. Probably the most significant expenditure over the past three months was for the repatriation of nine Ukrainian children who were in Italy since shortly after the war began.

It's a long story. Many people are familiar with Russia's illegal abduction of multitudes of Ukrainian children from occupied areas in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. Less known is the fate of hundreds of Ukrainian children in the EU. Days after the war started many orphaned and vulnerable children were sent to various EU countries including about 60 children from an orphanage that we work with in our region. An Orphan Hosting program took the children for what was supposed to be an extened hosting situation but once the children were there some district judges in Italy ruled that their assylum laws for unaccompanied minors applied to them and they were either given the choice to stay in Italy, or in most cases, their Italian guardians were given the choice to keep them in Italy. In other cases, the judges ruled that the children COULD NOT return to Ukraine while a state of war or martial law existed.

It's not that we're opposed to the children living in safety; we're opposed of what appears to be something akin to human trafficking. The Italian judges, in our opinion, have no right to adjudicate the fate of Ukrainian children, some of whom have family in Ukraine and are not available for international adoption even if there weren't a moratorium on those adoptions right now.

So, long story short, nine of the local children were allowed to return to Ukraine (to a safe area) and Shade for Children funded their repatriation. At least 20 children still remain in Italy and we might be called upon to help them before the end of the year.