It was a tatty plastic doll, the size of an egg, peering out from the folds of a blanket.

One of the children at Perechrysta orphanage cherished this little doll so much that they had hidden it in their bed. Out of everything I’d seen at the orphanage that day, this moved me most of all.

I thought of children back home, bedrooms filled with toys, computer games, TVs, DVD players. The 100 or so children at Perechrysta sleep in dormitories crammed with beds made of rusty iron or flimsy wood, with thin foam mattresses, ripped and stained. There are no brightly-coloured posters, cuddly toys or children’s books.

I visited the orphanage with Andrew McVeigh and Beverley Clegg, directors of Denholme-based charity Take Hope Yorkshire. Perechrysta is one of the projects the charity supports in Transcarpathia in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, Western Ukraine.

Take Hope delivers aid – mainly clothing, bedding, shoes and equipment for the disabled – to Vinogradiv, a town near the Ukraine/Hungary border.

Andrew launched the charity in 1995. “Ukraine is a beautiful country, blighted with poverty,” he said. “The Soviet withdrawal in 1991 left high unemployment and little health care or social support. When I first came here there were power cuts and bread queues. “Over the years Ukraine has been finding its feet but it’s a long process. Places like the orphanages are woefully underfunded.”

As we pulled up at Perechrysta, our mini-bus was surrounded by excited youngsters. They threw their arms around me, chattering in a language I didn’t understand. When I took photographs they ran up, eager to see their image on the camera. Our translator, local charity worker Ildiko Margitics, said the children often call her ‘Mama’.

These children are aged six to 17. Although they have some education it’s not officially recognised so they enter the adult world unqualified and unprepared for life. Many of them are ‘social orphans’; their parents can’t look after them for various reasons, mainly poverty or alcoholism. Some children have been abused. Some are simply dropped off at a local railway station and told to ‘find the orphanage’.

When we arrived there were about 50 children, the rest were being ‘rounded up’ after the summer. While we were there, eight youngsters arrived in a van.

By law, children with families must spend the summer with them. “Many are sent out begging,” said Sergei Bejaskalov, director of Perechrysta. “When they return they’re often under-nourished and need feeding up.” Sergei grew up in an orphanage. An amiable, good-hearted man, he clearly cares for the children but, like many people I met in Vinogradiv, he’s working with limited funds and resources.

Local attitudes don’t help. For reasons I couldn’t really fathom, these children are regarded as ‘mentally disabled.’ In the UK they’d be classed as special needs. But many of the youngsters I met there seemed bright and inquisitive. They simply hadn’t had a chance.

It’s as tragic as it is frustrating that their limited education hampers their chances even further, although Sergei is working hard to secure places on vocational skills courses for the older ones.

“It’s usually the case that, aged 17, they have to leave the orphanage with no qualifications, job or life skills,” said Andrew. “Many drift into crime.”

On Sergei’s desk was a photograph of a teenage girl. She had disappeared over summer with a gipsy camp. The news upset Andrew and Bev, who remembered her from a previous visit. “She asked if we’d take her home with us,” recalled Bev. “She was lovely, she mothered the younger children.”

The girl had lived at Perechrysta since she was found as a child wandering around a railway station. “She was doing well, she wanted to be a cook and I had organised a place for her to study,” sighed Sergei.

Much of Perechrysta looked like a Victorian workhouse. The toilets were holes in the ground in a crumbling, filthy block. The showers, also outdoors, were no better.

Take Hope’s current focus is providing 100 new beds for the orphanage. Two carpenters in Vinogradiv are building them.

We were shown some bedrooms, there was a stench from where children had wet their beds. Several children lay sleeping. “They are sick,” Sergei explained.

On a window-sill next to one bed was a photograph frame. I braced myself for a picture of a mother. Instead, it was a tatty picture of a martial arts action hero, ripped out of a comic.

Sergei led us into a store-room filled with aid that Take Hope had sent out earlier this year; bedding, clothes, play equipment and shoe-boxes full of toys, soap and toothbrushes put together by Bev and Andrew’s fellow parishioners at Our Lady of Lourdes church in Haworth We sorted out shoes donated by Allerton aid worker Norah Kilcoyne.

“This makes it worthwhile,” said Bev. “We’re a small charity, we can’t work miracles, but by taking small steps we can make a difference. Every penny we raise, everything that’s donated, goes here.”

We handed out sweets and biscuits we’d brought for the children. They chanted “Thankyou” in English. A couple of little boys looked bewildered, I wondered whether they were new arrivals. Aged six, children move on to Perechrysta from an orphanage for younger children in Vinogradiv.

A couple of days later we visited this orphanage, Berizka, home to 120 children aged three to six. The contrast was startling. Here was a sweeping driveway with immaculate lawns, flower beds and play areas. Classical music was piped into the air. The director, a smartly-dressed woman, took us into a reception area that resembled a hotel foyer. On the walls were photographs of smiling children, smartly-dressed, hair neatly combed.

Andrew explained that each year about ten per cent of children here are adopted, mainly by people from America, Italy and Spain, whose money goes into the orphanage. Older children are less likely to be adopted, leaving places like Perechrysta under-funded and poorly equipped. “The tragic thing is that this is home to these children,” said Andrew, looking around a brightly-painted playroom, full of toys. “Then, aged six, they move on to Perechrysta, with cramped bedrooms, ripped mattresses, toilet holes in the ground.”

We looked around nice clean bathrooms with shower cubicles, toothbrushes in colourful cups and towel pegs with children’s names painted on. A world away from the crumbling toilet block at Perechrysta.

We met some youngsters having lunch. Even though, for their early years, they live in a relatively pleasant environment it was heartbreaking to see these unwanted three and four-year-olds, knowing what kind of life they were likely to have unless they were among the few who were adopted.

A group of them sang a Ukrainian song for us. “What’s it about?” we asked Ildiko. She looked up with tears in her eyes. “It’s a song about mothers,” she said.

As we left, the director pointed out a garden pond with a dolphin fountain rising from it. She told us the water pump had broken and could the charity fund a new one. Bev and I looked at each other; surely she couldn’t be serious. Politely, Andrew said he’d see what he could do.

Back in the mini-bus, we had to laugh or we’d probably have cried. “I think beds for Perechrysta are a little higher on our priority list than a new pump for the dolphin fountain!” said Bev. “It shows the difference between the two orphanages. Places like Perechrysta need our help. The fundraising we do back in Bradford is making a difference. We need to keep that support going.”

  • For more information about Take Hope Yorkshire visit takehope.org.uk