Educational Lecture
April 8, 2010
The Street Children of Odessa
Monday, April 19th, at 1:30 p.m.
Robert Gamble, D. Min., Director of This Child Here program will discuss the children moving from street life to life in homes in Odessa, Ukraine. Cornell Estates will host the program on Monday, April 19th, at 1:30 p.m. in the Party Room. Of Ukraine’s nine million children, 65,000 live in state-run institutions, often separated from their siblings. Most of these children are abandoned by their parents due to poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, and drug use. They live under the streets and in the abandoned buildings and parks of Odessa.
In September of 2005, as Pastor of The First Presbyterian Church of Daytona Beach, Florida, Bob traveled to Ukraine and volunteered at a shelter for street children in Odessa. He met the staff and photographed children on the streets. In 2006, he returned to Odessa where his photographs were on exhibition during that week as a means to increase awareness of the plight of homeless children. Touched, Gamble resigned as Pastor of his church and moved to Odessa to help.
This Child Here has a mission to guide and encourage street children toward a life with a family, in a shelter or an orphanage, and to provide these children with the love, encouragement, life skills and motivation to lead healthy emotional, physical, mental and spiritual lives.
Bob Gamble’s mother, Bee Gamble, was a resident here at Cornell Estates and has graciously agreed to conduct this program.
Free and open to the public.
