1) What’s in a name?

Northern Ireland International Children’s Charity Appeal

or in Russian:

Severnaya Eirlanda Mezhduenarodnie Hristianstvuyue Detsky Prevlekaneye

NIICCA – What does it mean?

The name of the organisation and nature of its work are bound together in one:

Simply, NIICCA is an appeal to the people of Northern Ireland to remember and show favour to the plight of the impoverished children overseas.

2) Where and why it began.

October 2000 saw the launch of a new international charity appeal in Northern Ireland. NIICCA’s “Crisis in Crimea Appeal” was prompted be news of 30 effectively abandoned babies found by a children’s mission in a run-down hospital in Simferopol. The babies were then all under 1 year and being fed up to 7 times daily on diluted baby formula by a 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 of humanitarian aid shipments. With the 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 adulthood.

NIICCA is a registered charity in the UK and works in partnership with the Light of Crimea Foundation and River of Joy Organisation (both registered charities in Ukraine) for the aid and welfare of orphaned and abandoned children of all ages in the post-Soviet state.

The Chernobyl disaster and economic meltdown in Ukraine resulted in poverty, depression and premature death. Within the Soviet utopia, poverty didn’t exist, therefore orphaned and abandoned youngsters were housed in huge cold institutions, built in hideaway places out of the public eye. These are now rundown with no investment to maintain the buildings or provide for the basic needs of the children living in them, totalling up to 5000.

More coming soon …