The boys were shouting out loud “Common, Ukraine! Ukraine without orphans”. On arrival to the city the guys stopped not far from the zoo. The inhabitants of Rivne met the cyclists by the Ukrainian tradition with the “ karavai” ( a tradition loaf with ornaments).
According to the initiator of the bike tour Gennadiy Mokhnenko, no kids should be deprived of parental love and so he is calling to join the action and together we can fight for the equal rights for care for all children of the world. At the beginning the action had started as all Ukrainian under the slogan “The world and Ukraine without orphans”. Gennadiy Mokhnenko himself is a priest, social activist, a director of the center of children rehabilitation “Republic Pilgrim” who is in addition an adoptive father of 32 kids. He also mentioned that one of the partakers of the bike tour is an adoptive father of 8 kids.
“We call it a worldwide action and the former street kids take part in it. For the most part they are former orphans who were adopted but they grew up on the street, some of them from the age of 2, some – from the age of 3-4. “We are riding with our kids to call on people to adopt orphans. We believe that our kids will see the last orphanage shut down, we are certain that each child has right to wake up and to hug their parents. I think the most horrible monument of the Soviet Union is orphanages. – Gennadiy Mokhnenko states.
About 30 street kids – adopted kids, graduates from orphanages as well as adoptive parents take part in the action alongside with the representatives of public and charity organizations.. In total there are 9547 miles behind them and today is their first day in the western Ukraine. The partakers of the initiative try to attract the attention of as many people as possible towards the problems of Ukrainian orphans and children in orphanages.
The participants of the action have started from the European Square in Kiev in the 5th of July and they will ride through 5 areas of Ukraine. In Rivne 2 round tables will take place and in the evening the inhabitants of Rivne are invited to the concert where the partakers and the director will tell about their journey in details.
As a whole the cyclists will visit within this stage of the bike tour Western Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. And in the 9th of September the bike tour will finish in Germany.
