Thornhill family gives golden summer to Chernobyl child

Belarus boy gets taste of dentist, arcade games

by Michell Brown

Like most kids his age, 10-year-old Dzianis Daniliuk spent the summer riding his bicycle, watching movies, swimming and visiting attractions around Toronto.

Through an interpreter, he said the most fun he had this summer was playing arcade games at Dave and Buster's, a local eatery.

But, as you might expect, he wasn't too thrilled about going to the dentist for the first time in his life.

All things considered, he will go back to Belarus this week with a wide range of memories to share with his family, thanks to a Thornhill family that has played host to him for the past six weeks.

"I was thinking summer is coming, my son isn't doing too much and we have a spare bedroom, so why not?" said Arlene Goldman, a mother of two.

Earlier this year, slie read in a magazine about Pamela Ellens, a Beamsville, Ont., businesswoman who started a charity to help children from that part of the world.

Dubbed Belarus' Children of Chernobyl, her group focuses on children affected by the 1986 Chemobyl disaster, in which an explosion and fire at a nuclear reactor in that Ukrainian facility exposed more- than eight million people to high levels of radiation and radioactive material.

Belarus, because of its location, was particularly affected, as prevailing winds carried tlie radioactive cloud over Belarus and parts of Russia to Scandinavia and then blew it back to Belarus again.

Some 22 per cent of its agricultural land was affected by radiation and researchers have since found a 10-fold increase in thyroid cancer rates among children living in the most contaminated areas.

Ms Ellens said she was moved to start the charity in 2000 after her Rotary club was approached for money to fund the project.

"But I said we can't just fund it, we have to do it all," slie said from her home in Beamsville.

"We should be providing everything we can for however many we were going to do. They (the club) agreed, said it was a super idea and said, 'You get to do it'"

She hosted the first child in 2000, offering the young girl medical treatment, new glasses and a respite from the contamination still in the soil in his hometown.

Thanks to the donated services of Paul Sclodnick, Deborah Lowey, Peter Copp and Tammy Kaufman, Dziams
was also able to get a medical checkup, an eye exam and some dental work done while he was here.

This year has been the largest yet for me cliarity, with more than 30 children staying with families across southern Ontario and New York state.

The Goldmans are the only York Region family hosting a child this year and Ms Goldman said they would
probably do it again.

"I do a lot of charity work and I like to give my time because I can't afford to give money, certainly not the big money," she said.
"It's been a lot of fun."

To find out more about the Children of Chernobyl project, contact Pamela Ellens at pamela@wimhfoundation.ca