Our Story
After being friends and supporters of People Who Care, Ukraine for almost fifteen years, we were appointed as the charity’s UK Representatives in 2014.
We were born in South Africa and have been married for forty years and have three adult children. We moved to the UK in 1998, where David has worked as a Religious Education teacher for most of that time and Sandy has been an Administrator until she recently retired.
In 2007 we went to the Ukraine on a ‘Discovery Tour’, seeking out Jewish people and helping them obtain their papers to make Aliyah to Israel. The trip was arranged with the ‘People Who Care’ Charity, which is a Jewish charity based in Zaporozhye, Ukraine, working closely with those wanting to leave. They particularly support vulnerable people like Holocaust survivors, refugees from the war-zone, orphans, as well as marginalised families. We met Igor Levenshtein, President, and Tatiana Yakovleva, Executive Director of People Who Care, in 2007 and have been in contact with them ever since.
We are all aware of the violence and chaos which erupted in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Many Jewish communities experienced anti-Semitic attacks. There are many developments within the Ukraine which echo the strains of Holocaust rhetoric and there is an urgency to help people get out, as possibly this window of opportunity may soon close. Our hearts have been stirred to be part of the solution in these troubled times.
The film, ‘Arek’, which is a moving story of a small boy who survived the holocaust, has a most challenging strapline:
“What hurts the victim the most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.”
WE WILL NOT BE SILENT BYSTANDERS!