Camp Claddagh is the Galway branch of
Chernobyl Children's International
The Mission of Camp Claddagh is to offer rest and respite to children from the area affected by the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Accident. Our primary goal is to give children from the affected area a month's holiday away from their contaminated environment with volunteer host families in the Galway area.
On April 26th, 1986 there was an explosion at a nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, on the border between Ukraine and Belarus. Many tons of radioactive materials were thrown into the air. Some of these materials were carried around the world, but 70 per cent of the radioactive substances blew north over the population of Belarus.
A quarter of the country's best farmlands and forests have been poisoned for hundreds of years by caesium 137 and strontium 90. Where there is plutonium the land will be uninhabitable for ever. Hundreds of towns and villages were evacuated, and the entire country has been declared a zone of international ecological disaster. In southern Belarus thyroid cancer in children has increased by more than 100 times, due to the large amounts of radioactive iodine they have ingested, and there have been rises in many other types of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory problems, ailments of the digestive system and birth defects.
Camp Claddagh is a 100% Voluntary group in Galway that bring children who continue to suffer as a result of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. The group is an outreach group of the Chernobyl Children's Project International and are currently involved with a number of aid programmes. The main focus is on bringing children to Galway for a much needed break.
Doctors have proven a month here with clean air and diet can add up to two years life expectancy to a child (drops in their radiation levels of 30 – 50% are regularly recorded).
Camp Claddagh are building a 'home of hope' in Belarus that will take 10 children from an orphanage and place them in a family home. We also pay for children to have life saving cardiac surgery. Most of all it is all about the children! Everything we do is to enchance the lives of children who live with the aftermath of Chernobyl.
The Camp Claddagh Group is also involved in fundraising for the Chernobyl Children's Cardiac Programme. The Programme offers children Cardiac treatment including life saving operations to overcome the debilitating effects nuclear radiation has on the heart.
