Charity in Wartime: How a Ukrainian Children’s Cancer Group Carries On

A few months ago, Olya Kudinenko, founder of Tabletochki Charity Foundation, a Ukrainian organization for children with cancer, was about to announce a capital campaign. The group had raised $10 million in two years — about what it had received in the eight years before, since it was established in 2011. Kudinenko wanted to build Ukraine’s first cancer hospital for children.

Plans changed abruptly when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February. The 35 staff members for the group, which is based in Kyiv, are scattered. Some have left the country. Others have joined the Ukrainian military. Kudinenko was out of the country when the invasion began; she has yet to return home and has spent the past several weeks in the United States, working in part to raise support for her organization.

Tabletochki’s work continues, however, albeit in very different ways. Kudinenko, a former public-relations executive, started the organization with a simple Facebook page seeking money to buy medicine for chemotherapy and other treatments. (Tabletochki is a slangy, playful Ukrainian word for “pill.”) In the first month, she raised $1,000, a windfall when treatments in Ukraine cost as little as $3 a dose. “I thought, This is so easy. I can help everyone and everyone will survive,” she says.

Courtesy of Tabletochki

She soon discovered the task was more daunting. Ukraine has one of the highest child cancer mortality rates in the world. Oncology is not advanced, according to Kudinenko — there’s even some fear that cancer is contagious — and doctors are certified as specialists with as little as three months of training.

Over time, Tabletochki expanded to provide treatment, rehabilitation services, and psychological support to children and families; help upgrade hospital facilities; and advocate for parents’ rights. It also paid for education for physicians and nurses.

Kudinenko spoke with the Chronicle about how the organization pivoted once the invasion began and the struggles of providing care during wartime.

How did you respond in the first days of the invasion?

We started to treat kids with cancer outside of Ukraine because it’s not safe for them to go through the treatment while rockets are flying all around and hitting hospitals and apartment buildings. So we have evacuated more than 800 families who have kids — more than 2,000 people over all, including siblings, parents, grandmas, and so on.

Right after the war started, we called companies and asked for buses and gas and started to evacuate. We built a route from every point in Ukraine to Lviv, in the west. A hospital there does triage and Covid-19 checks, and we provide supportive care. And then the children go to Poland, where they triage again and are sent to European clinics, to Canada, and to the United States. With St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, our longtime partner, we negotiated with hospitals so that a kid with a specific diagnosis went to a clinic that specialized in that diagnosis; they didn’t go to just any clinic or any center.

Are you still caring for children with cancer inside the country?

Yes. Thousands of them are still inside the country. Some of them wouldn’t survive the travel — that’s the reality. Also, some families don’t want to leave the country.

So we provide drugs and logistical help to the hospitals and psychological support for families. The stress they face is not just double the stress they faced before; it’s 10,000 times worse. Basically, these families fight two wars at the same time. The first one is against cancer. The second one is with the Russians. That’s not easy for them.

What are the challenges for providing care in the country?

There are lots of challenges. Logistics, you know, aren’t easy. The roads are hard to navigate, and we don’t have gas. Not every doctor stayed in the country, and some nurses and their families left, which is understandable.

Kids will pay for this: We can’t guarantee the treatments they need or that the treatment will be on time. We expect that a lot of kids with cancer will be diagnosed later rather than sooner.

How has your work changed since the war began?

More than 50 percent of our operations are still focused on kids with cancer, but we have expanded because of the war. First, we started to help all kids in children’s hospitals, not just those with cancer. Second, we started to help civilians with catastrophic diseases because it’s so hard for them to get help right now. Also, we provide tactical medicine to our defense forces because we have resources and we can support them.

How is your fundraising going in the United States?

It’s a process. In Ukraine, we do things more quickly. If you ask for something, you will receive the answer almost immediately. We’re new here; nobody knows us here. I think it would be much easier if we were known here, like the Red Cross. That’s totally understandable.

What do you see as the future for Tabletochki?

When the war is finished, we will need the cancer hospital we were going to announce. I hope I can prepare everything in advance so that we will be ready to start the construction right away.

We believe in our victory. And we believe that the war will be finished soon and we can recover and rebuild the country. It’s crucial that we start to think about rebuilding Ukraine right now and attract development aid so people and organizations can start working on the ground.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.