The ninth large foster family moved into the house built under the Room for Childhood project by the Foundation together with the Minderoo Foundation

A large foster family of Yana Batiuk and Viktor Mykhalko has moved into their new home in Cherkasy, built by the Olena Zelenska Foundation together with the private Minderoo Foundation from Australia.
In 2014, due to the war, they left their newly purchased home in Makiivka, and in 2022, their spacious apartment in the town of Bilozerke.

Until recently, a large foster family from the Donetsk region lived and settled in a local dormitory in Cherkasy, so a large house was critically needed for the family.

The Olena Zelenska Foundation helped the Batyuk-Mykhalko family, which has nine children, with permanent housing and, together with the Australian Minderoo Foundation built a new comfortable home.

Now 6-year-old Mykyta can attend a football club near the house, and 15-year-old Yurii can rehearse for performances in a theater studio in his own room.

The Batyuk-Mykhalko is the ninth family for whom a new home with the “Room for Childhood” becomes a place of opportunities and dreams come true.

The construction of the house was backed by the Australian Minderoo Foundation. Together with the Foundation, the Room for Childhood project is also implemented by the government of the United Arab Emirates, the government of Estonia (through the Estonian Center for International Development ESTDEV), and other partners. 

Additional information
In 2023, the Olena Zelenska Foundation launched the Room for Childhood project to build housing for large foster families. So far, 14 houses have been built in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Cherkasy, Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Zhytomyr, and Zakarpattia regions. This housing is transferred to the community balance sheet. The families will be able to live in it for the entire duration of their large foster family. 

The Australian Minderoo Foundation became one of the project's donors. Together with the organization, the Foundation built three houses in Cherkasy and Zakarpattia regions. You can read more about the visit of the First Lady Olena Zelenska to the Somovi large foster family.