English – Alle kinderen zijn pareltjes in God's hand

Summary

Foundation Oekroe has been officially established 30 March 2003. Through his extensive exposure and growing compassion for Eastern Europe, founder Jacob (Jaap) de Mooij got a growing inspiration to do something significant for youngsters in Eastern Europe with the help of Dutch youngsters. Due to his many charity related visits to both Ukraine as well as Romania he came up with the name ‘Oekroe’ (i.e. a concatenation of the three first characters of the names of both countries in the Dutch language).

The objective of Foundation Oekroe is to establish, promote and maintain contacts between youngsters in The Netherlands and youngsters in Eastern Europe. This objective is realized through organising summer camps for kids, working holidays and the like. The most important aspect for those activities is to tell and propagate the Gospel.

Foundation Oekroe has three key activities:

Camp Ukraine: Since the summer of 2003 Foundation Oekroe is organising annual summer camps for kids. Every year those summer camps take place at 2 or 3 locations in the western part of Ukraine.
Working Hands: Since spring 2007 the foundation also organises annual working holidays. During those two week periods 1 or 2 buildings are refurbished or remodelled. Examples are schools and crèches.
Emergency care for kids: Since the establishment of Oekroe the surplus of funds raised for Camp Ukraine and Working Hands is being spent on emergency care for kids. Although medical care is free in Ukraine sick children have to either travel to Kiev with their parents or need to cross the EU border into Hungary were medical care is not free of charge.