How we started
The idea for Care for Kids Now – Orphanage Foundation came to our founder, Guy Horowitz, through his volunteering experience with Ukrainian refugees during the Ukrainian-Russian war of 2022.
On the second day of the war, while watching the news, there was a mother of three pleading for help on the screen. I cannot describe with words how this touched me, but the impact this had on me was almost instant because that same day I jumped in the car with a friend of mine and we left for Ukraine without knowing what exactly we would end up doing, but with a goal of helping wherever and whoever we could.
Eventually, I joined a project where we evacuated 600 people on buses out of Odessa.
We successfully brought them to safety in the south of Romania and built functional infrastructure. Many of them wished to stay there for a while and return back to their homes in Odessa as soon as possible.
As we settled down in an empty hotel along the Black Sea in Romania, a lot of our people were sick with fevers and the kids had lice, and out of those 600 people there was only one nurse. So, we decided to drive for an hour to the nearest city in search of medicine and found an open pharmacy and entered it like people on a mission. We started filling up bags with all kinds of things that we could find for the kids and collecting medicine from a long list that was created back at the hotel. Pretty quickly the women at the pharmacy counter realized who we were and the mission we were on. While she was filling up another bag with medicine, she did her best to stay professional but the emotions overtook her and started crying, her colleague saw that and started crying too.
Soon after they started going back and forth to the storage and brought us bags with extra supplies and medicine, things that they thought would benefit us, and they wouldn’t take any of our money for it – it was a gift. As she was giving me one of the bags full of children’s medication and a few toys, her eyes gazed down and she said to me, “I am sorry for your country” with tears in her eyes.
Amongst those 600 people, there was a high number of orphans, who had already been orphans before the war had started. This was one of the main reasons why I joined that specific project, as working with children in need was always something I volunteered for from a young age. For me, this experience was one of the more intense moments I can recall to date. The level of kindness and empathy complete strangers showed us is hard to put in words, but if I try, it was human kindness at its finest.
How the idea of starting my own foundation matured and evolved
As my patients and friends began to hear where I was, there was a lot of enthusiasm to help in any way they could, namely, it came down to them wanting to donate money. Since I was physical with the orphans, many of them wanted to send money directly to me as it was the quickest and easiest way to ensure their donations would go directly to the children and their contributions would immediately render results.
I did some research of my own and I was redirecting them to donate to two of the bigger orphanage foundations, but some still insisted on sending their money directly to me.
Simultaneously, we were getting local support and donations in the form of clothes and toys. Every time I saw a small toy in some of the newly arrived bags, I would pick one or two items and bring it to the 5th floor where the children under the age of 10 were staying. When I would enter the room, the first child that saw me would run up and get the toy; the joy this simple gesture brought to those little ones was all I needed, and it hit me right there – if giving something so small to a child that was left behind can make them this happy, why not create a platform that focuses on giving them as many of those moments as possible?
Also during my time there I tried to support their wonderful, kind, and generous nannies and caregivers in any possible way, whilst trying to understand if there was actually something I could do for orphanages in general, be it in Ukraine or elsewhere.
And here was my realization; even though there are many professional foundations with a worldwide database, there are still so many orphanages that the big foundations can’t reach as there are just too many of them and unfortunately, these numbers are growing daily. Because of this, many of these smaller orphanages are in horrible condition, to say the least, and are in need of help in all forms. This is where I found my purpose and why I decided to start my own foundation. Together through the foundation, we will be able to collect donations and approach these smaller orphanages that don’t get the same level of support as these bigger, more well-known foundations can provide. This way, we can really make a difference and provide them with the support and tools they need. The process is quite simple, we will ask them exactly what they need, find it through a network of volunteers and generous donations and physically bring it to them. As easy as that!
