A request from a Ukrainian charity that works with addiction and with veterans
Peace to this community, and forgive me for coming as a stranger.
I write from Ukraine. I am Pavlo Kazarian, a clinical psychologist and director of Dzherelo, a registered non-profit organisation near Kyiv. Since 2006 we have run a residential programme for people recovering from drug and alcohol dependence: they live together for about a year, keep the household themselves, and work in groups with psychologists and with counsellors who came through the same programme. We are not a clinic and we take no state money. Consultations for a family are free and anonymous, because the people who call us usually have nothing left.
Since the full-scale war we also work with veterans and their families. A man comes back, cannot sleep, starts drinking, and his wife or mother arrives at our door not knowing where else to turn. That part of our work has grown, and it is the hardest.
I am not asking this community for money. What helps a small charity most is simpler than that: prayer for the people in our house, and a word passed on. If anyone here has experience building a parish ministry around addiction and around families of the addicted, I would be grateful to learn from you, because you have been doing it far longer than we have.
Thank you for keeping a space like this open.
Adding the link, since a few people asked me privately on other platforms. The centre, the programme by stages and the materials we give to families are here: https://ninarkotikam.com/ru/ The site is in Ukrainian and Russian, browser translation reads it well. If your parish ever has a Ukrainian family in this situation, that page is the fastest thing to hand them.