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You are > Home > Bausch & Lomb employees follow their ‘Vision for Vasilivichi’
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Friday, June 27, 2003
Bausch & Lomb employees follow their ‘Vision for Vasilivichi’
TWENTY eight orphans from Vasilivichi, near Chernobyl in Belarus, are being treated to the trip of a lifetime by employees at Waterford’s Bausch & Lomb contact lens plant. The visually impaired children, aged between five and 18, are being given the three-week holiday through the ‘Vision for Vasilivichi’ programme, established by Bausch & Lomb employees in 1995.
In 2003, for the sixth year in a row, Waterford employees have enabled children from the Vasilivichi Orphanage to visit Waterford for an action-packed summer holiday camp, providing the children with fun activities, exercise, medical treatment and an escape from an otherwise routine existence.
The group of children will also attend a football game on July 4 between Waterford United and University College Dublin, wearing jerseys donated by the Waterford United Club. In the eight year history of the scheme, more than 240,000 has been contributed by the staff at Bausch & Lomb through pay packet deductions. This fund has been used to help improve the lives of the children in Vasilivichi, with virtually no administration expenses.
The project, which won the Waterford employees a Bausch & Lomb global award, has been boosted by outside donations from organisations such as the World Mercy Fund, paying for medical treatment, funding the building of proper showers and toilets and improving the general living conditions for children and carers at the Belarus orphanage. The employees and their supporters have paid for medical treatment, built proper showers and toilets and brought the children to Waterford for the past six years for action-packed summer holidays each year. A total of 250 children have visited Waterford to date. The Vasilivichi children - all twenty-eight of them - are in Waterford from June 30th this year to July 21st. The camp is back with all the usual mix of fun, activities and medical treatment as in previous years.
“For most of these young people, it is their last chance to be included on the list as they will leave the school in the next year or so,” according to Vasilivichi committee member, Vivienne Burke.
On the work agenda for the current year at the Vasilivichi orphanage is the completion of a third set of bathrooms. This project might involve recruiting skilled volunteers, such as plumbers, electricians, plasterers and builders from the plant, who are willing to go to Vasilivichi to finish the construction programme. The group is also exploring ways to help community employees in Vasilivichi build up a relationship with their counterparts in Waterford.
This includes firefighters, police, and health workers and the plan is to have some Vasilivichi representatives visit Waterford to train with members of the emergency services. Donations to the ‘Vision for Vasilivichi’ fund can be made to Bank of Ireland, Lisduggan, Waterford. Account Number 7063844, Sort Code 90-62-16 .
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