We are often asked how we hold on. Our answer is: we are not holding on, we are living this fight. Every call to the Foundation, every search request is not just a new case. It is a life that has been torn in two.
Today, every news feed will be full of numbers. We will name them too, because the world must see the scale of this pain. We speak in numbers, but we think in names. Because behind every line in the reports of the Office of the Prosecutor General or the National Police stands a child whose right to a home, a family and safety was brazenly taken away.
When I say: 685 CHILDREN HAVE DIED IN UKRAINE OVER 4 YEARS OF FULL-SCALE INVASION — I think of unfulfilled dreams, of graduation dresses no one will wear, of laughter that has gone silent. And these are only the figures Ukraine has been able to confirm. We still do not know the exact numbers in cities such as Mariupol and Volnovakha.
When I learn from our Foundation's volunteers that 2,294 CHILDREN ARE CURRENTLY LISTED AS MISSING IN UKRAINE — I see thousands of families living in the hell of uncertainty, with one question: "Where are you?"
And then there are 20,000 children deported to Russian territory or forcibly displaced within occupied regions. This is documented data. Yet figures from open Russian sources speak of an unthinkable 744,000. These are thousands of children being stripped of their roots, their names, their homes.
For us, these 4 years have also been a journey of transformation. What began as an urgently organised search for the missing in the first days of the invasion has grown into a large, systemic Foundation. There are currently 1,121 ACTIVE CASES in our database, and 669 of them are being worked on by volunteers right now. We have come a long way — from finding the first people to large-scale projects — and today our work is a fight on several fronts.
We not only help search for and return stolen children home, but also, here in Ukraine, we contribute to the development of family-based care, so that every child without parental care can, despite everything, find a new and loving family.
Four years of fighting. We have grown stronger, but our hearts have grown more fragile from what we witness every day. Let us not grow accustomed to war. Let us not grow accustomed to children being targets.
We act. We believe. We will win. 💙💛
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