Ukrainian Gift of Life's success based on simple desire to help (08/10/03)

Ukrainian Gift of Life's success based on simple desire to help

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - When George Kuzma decided to get into charity work after inadvertently becoming involved in a project sponsored by Rotary International, he was thinking in limited economies of scale. He was fairly certain that he could convince Northern New Jersey Rotary District 7090 to extend medical support to children from Ukraine with congenital heart defects, as it was doing for disadvantaged children in other countries.

However, Mr. Kuzma, 58, a business consultant, did not imagine that his pet project, named Ukrainian Gift of Life (UGOL), would achieve such widespread success and give so much hope to Ukrainian kids and their parents.

"Not in our wildest dreams did we believe it would grow like this," exclaimed Mr. Kuzma in Kyiv, where he led a group of 16 people, members of six American families, on a reunion tour to reacquaint themselves with the young Ukrainian kids they had sponsored for stays in the U.S. The U.S. families had provided lodging and support, including food, transportation and financial backing to mothers, fathers and, of course, the children who had undergone open heart surgery in the U.S.

In Kyiv on July 12 they were feted at an afternoon reception and were part of a press conference. In Lviv the following week they visited the Lviv Regional Hospital-Surgical Center and took part in a reunion with more than 500 friends and family members of the children who have benefited from the project, a group that included Lviv Mayor Lubomyr Bunyak. One child who had been part of the program, now 16 years old, traveled to the reunion with her mother from Crimea - a distance of some 1,100 miles.

183 children have benefitted

Since the organization Mr. Kuzma founded began cooperating with the Rotary-sponsored Gift of Life program in 1996, UGOL has raised nearly $250,000 to provide life-saving heart surgery and intervention procedures to 183 infants and children from Ukraine. While a majority of the procedures have been performed in Lviv at the Lviv Regional Hospital-Surgical Center, 83 have taken place in the United States - most at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, N.Y., but also at Hope Hospital in Chicago and St. Joseph's Hospital in Paterson, N.J.

Seventy-six of the 83 procedures undertaken in the United States have been surgeries, with two children returning for additional procedures. All except for one have been successful. The youngest child to be operated on was barely 4 months old, while the oldest was in her teens.

UGOL has tried to have surgery performed in Ukraine whenever possible because costs are much lower and the quality and standard of care for most types of surgical procedures are comparable to U.S. standards. About 100 young children have received treatment in this way.

However, when Ukrainian hospitals have lacked the expertise or the equipment - as more often has been the case - to give a child the help he would receive in a U.S. medical institution, UGOL has made arrangements in the U.S. Most often these cases have arisen in situations where the child was under the age of 2 - ironically, the time when corrective procedures are most successful. Unfortunately, Ukraine's hospitals are ill-equipped to handle infant surgery.

A child comes to the U.S. for surgery after the UGOL's chief consultant in Ukraine, Dr. Yurii Ivaniv, who specializes in diagnostic radiology, and his team determine that doctors there cannot guarantee a high degree of success in an operation to correct a congenital heart defect on a child who has turned to them.

In cooperation with the Northern New Jersey Rotary Gift of Life program, UGOL makes arrangements for transportation, finds a host U.S. family and interpreters, if need be.

A simple desire to help

U.S. families generally host a mother or a father and the child for about a month, providing all the necessities and usually more, such as excursions to local tourist spots, clothing and other gifts. Thus far, 65 families have volunteered to host Ukrainians in the program. Fourteen of them have come back requesting to sponsor a second family. What drives their generosity is a simple desire to help.

Richard Kawalek, who traveled to Ukraine with his wife to see the kids they had hosted, explained that the satisfaction he had received in being a part of the UGOL program was incomparable to nearly anything else he had experienced.

"We're not rich, but if you just read the letters these kids send," the retired architect explained, before stopping momentarily to compose himself, "I get moved every time."

He added that he and his wife had become closely involved with UGOL since their first experience hosting a Ukrainian family and had donated $1,000 to the organization last Christmas.

"My wife and I decided that I didn't need another leather coat from her [as a Christmas gift] and that she didn't need another one from me either," Mr. Kawalek said.

Mr. Kuzma, the president of UGOL, explained that the project he developed has taken on special meaning to many of the Rotary Clubs in the Northern New Jersey district. Some clubs and their members specifically request Ukrainian families when providing their aid. He said the key to UGOL's success is the support structure the organization provides: the interpreters, the transportation, the comfort to the parents and the extra phone call they are ready to make in order to help.

"There are Rotary Clubs that will sponsor only a Ukrainian child. They know that if they need support help, that help is there," explained Mr. Kuzma.

Mr. Kuzma conceived of his project after his son had asked that mom and dad take in a family from Poland in 1990 as part of a high school program that Rotary had initiated. Mr. Kuzma said he wondered immediately why the program couldn't be structured to bring benefits to disadvantaged Ukrainian kids, too. Some 5,500 kids in Ukraine are born annually with congenital heart defects, half of which require surgery to correct, something the country's ill-funded medical system can hardly afford to perform.

"My wife, Kathy, and I saw that we could encourage Rotary to help Ukrainian kids as well," continued Mr. Kuzma.

A cooperative project

He contacted the Northern New Jersey district office of Rotary and proposed a cooperative project in which UGOL, in addition to paying for the nominal costs of the operations performed on the Ukrainian children and the medicines that would be needed, would also develop a support system - what Mr. Kuzma referred to as "value-added" support, such as transportation, interpreters, psychological comfort and shelter for the kids and their families who find themselves in an alien environment.

It was an idea that the Rotary district liked and a partnership commenced. Mr. Kuzma and his wife incorporated UGOL as a non-profit organization in 1996 and formed a board of trustees that included Ann Kowal, Marie Hywel and Stefania Bryant. UGOL sponsored its first surgery at Montefiore Hospital in June 1997.

Mr. Kuzma came away from his latest visit to Ukraine with a slew of new ideas on how to continue to help the country - one which he has never called home but got to know through his parents and the Ukrainian community that has surrounded him his entire life.

He said he would like to have more of the infant surgeries UGOL sponsors performed in Ukraine because it would help to lower costs for his organization and increase the expertise of Ukrainian doctors. He said he would soon begin to raise funds toward refurbishing an intensive care unit in the Lviv hospital's pediatric unit.

Mr. Kuzma also mentioned that he would like to develop a scholarship program funded by donations from the worldwide Ukrainian diaspora for talented students in Ukraine who cannot afford the cost of tuition. He indicated with some lack of confidence that the effort might be out of his league. But then he didn't believe UGOL would get as far as it has.

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