A loving mother of two has started a fundraiser for a daycare center in Ukraine that is in urgent need of a generator.

Sasha Sydorenko, 36, who opened the “Sova-Sova” crèche in Kiev in 2019, said the lack of electricity could spell disaster during the winter months. Although Sasha moved to Wicklow a few months after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, she still runs the crèche remotely.

She told Dublin Live: “In the last four or five months they started cutting off all the electricity. That’s quite normal all over Ukraine. The crèche I run is very small and it’s a project that’s close to my heart. But we can’t use fridges and we have no light. We try to keep the food warm all the time, but because the weather is hot it’s quite risky.”

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Sasha said that while they can cope with the lack of electricity due to the hot weather, she fears it will get worse when winter comes. She said: “In winter we have really extreme temperatures. Sometimes it’s -5C or even -15C. Without electricity it’s just impossible to continue.”

Sasha has launched a GoFundMe page to raise money to buy a generator for the crèche. Sasha, who works at the Ukrainian Community Centre in Bray, said she wants to keep the crèche running for the children.

“Many children stayed behind despite the war. We also have some children who left Ukraine but came back. Some children moved to Kiev from the parts of Ukraine that were destroyed.”

When she first opened the nursery, Sasha wasn’t too happy about the fact that it was in a basement, but she has now realised that it was a blessing in disguise. She said: “It’s a very safe place for everyone, even the neighbours. In case of missiles, they can go into the basement.”

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