Basic Needs
We offer a food and clothing pantry, laundry facilities, and showers. We provide diapers and other basic items for families, supplies for personal hygiene, and help with transportation; we meet other needs as they arise.
Education
We begin with life skills training, then provide tutoring, study help, and English lessons. We offer guidance for a student’s whole educational path, including college applications and some help with tuition.
Vocation
We teach a strong work ethic, and help young adults find work opportunities. Through our Restoration Project, some apprentice in the home renovation trade. We help others earn certificates in marketable skills.
Medical Advocacy
We teach youth about health and hygiene, and accompany them to the doctor and dentist. We help orphanage graduates of all ages with advocacy and financial aid in medical crises.
Housing
We advocate extensively with government agencies and landlords to provide housing for our young people. We offer transitional and crisis housing, and we renovate orphanage graduates’ unlivable properties.
Relationships
Parenting
Through Stop the Cycle, we invest in orphan-led families with intensive aid, parenting classes, and mentoring. Shelter Crisis Housing provides high-impact holistic help for orphan moms at risk.
Spiritual Growth
All our staffers are Christians with deep compassion for orphanage graduates. We share the Gospel across our programming, connect orphanage graduates with local churches, and disciple those who follow Jesus.
Leadership
Last Bell’s former orphans are volunteering, serving in church, and helping their younger peers. Two former orphans have joined our staff. They’re changing the paradigm of orphanhood in their culture.
Core Programs
Educational Outreach
Educational Outreach to trade schools is our primary point of connection with recent orphanage graduates coming into the city from all over the region. We offer on-site life skills classes in twelve of the Zhytomyr trade schools attended by orphanage graduates. As we develop one-on-one mentoring relationships, we invite them to special group events and outings. Our youth often spend time at our Day Center in the downtown area, where we also offer legal assistance, help with housing, medical advocacy, counseling, and humanitarian aid.
Stop the Cycle
Our Stop the Cycle program assists orphan-parented families, especially single moms. We offer parenting classes, summer retreats, spiritual mentoring, a childcare co-op, and help with basic needs. There are times when orphan moms need to leave an abusive or unsafe living situation; through Last Bell’s Shelter Crisis Housing facility, a three-story house in the heart of Zhytomyr, we provide safe transitional housing. Our Mobile Unit takes supplies and medical checkups to orphan moms in isolated villages.
The Restoration Project
Many of our youth inherit uninhabitable property. The Restoration Project is an apprenticeship program, training a group of orphanage graduates to restore the apartments and homes of fellow orphans. Last Bell staff provide both construction oversight and mentoring. The young people who participate will become employable and able to participate in restoring their own communities. For beneficiaries, safe housing serves as a springboard for future success and stability.
