NIICCA – Light of Crimea
Supporting Mission through Humanitarian Means
WELCOME to the website of the Northern Ireland International Children’s Charity Appeal (NIICCA), supporting mission through humanitarian initiatives and child-dare programmes in Crimea, Ukraine. We work in partnership with Crimea Republic Charity Foundation “Light of Crimea”, based in Simferopol, Crimea’s capital city and made up of a team local and international believers.Crimea is as far south as you can go in Ukraine. It is one hour’s flight from Kiev, Ukraine’s capital and seat of government, twenty one hours train journey but decades away from the attention and effects of government aid and assistance. Meanwhile the people could perish but for the intervention of NGO’s.
Our work began with the find of 30 abandoned babies in a run-down hospital in Crimea’s capital city, Simferopol late 2000. The babies were then all under 1 year and being fed up to 7 times daily on diluted baby formula by an skeleton staff of unpaid nurses.
Our response was to assess the immediate need, then to raise whatever funds we could and send support by way humanitarian aid shipments. With wheels set in motion to continue to provide a level of care for these and future abandoned infants, several trips to the area soon revealed the greater human need and trauma of thousands of children caught in the old soviet institutional system with little or no hope of any quality of life or employment once/if they reached adult years.
In 2001, NIICCA was accepted as a charity by the Inland Revenue. From the outset we have worked in conjunction with a registered charity foundation in Crimea, Light of Crimea, that receives and distributes the aid we send. With your help we can continue to be a primary sponsor in numerous one-off as well as long-term care initiatives.
Please follow the links to gain an overview and insight into the key aspects of our work…