A GROUP of Scottish football fans are raising money for a charity in Ukraine which helps look after children with Down’s syndrome.
The Tartan Army Sunshine Appeal aims to make a donation to identified children’s charities wherever the national team plays its matches.
This evening, Scotland are set to take on Ukraine and although the game is taking place in Poland, the group is making a donation.
Charity secretary Clark Gillies told The National: “If it’s a friendly in Luxembourg or a huge game at Wembley, we’ll be there.
“I think there’s only six or seven countries we haven’t been able to donate to. The money comes from a mixture of hard work off our own backs and donations.
“We’ve designed T-shirts in the past, and at the start of Covid, I remember we had a wee joke about face masks and how important they would be, but we ended up making about £2000 off them.
“Some people give us £20 now and again, some have orders that drip feed in a couple of hundred quid a year.”
The charity made its first donation to a charity in Lithuania back in 2003 which helped a young boy get access to a prosthetic leg.
Since then, they have helped charities build refuge shelters in Peru and Mexico, provided funding for an art project at a school for blind children in Ukraine and built a playground in a children’s hospital in Moldova.
Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the charity has been helping the Dzherelo Rehabilitation Centre in Lviv. It offers help to children and young people with cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome and autism.
Their next donation will go towards helping children at Bebiko from the city of Ternopil, which offers assistance to children aged 2-5 with Down’s syndrome.
Gillies added: “My wife is Ukrainian, so we have strong roots over there and a lot of my friends were offering us money because we were collecting medicine and food and sending things over.
“From a Ukraine point of view, during the darkest days of the war, we would send messages and it was hard to know what to say. It’s so complex, so it would often turn to small talk, and that would generally be about the football.”
The charity will be setting up a hub in Krakow to do a virtual presentation, allowing representatives from Bebiko to appear direct from Ternopil virtually to receive a donation of around £4000.
Gillies said: “It’s always encouraging when I meet a fan who maybe hasn’t heard of us because they always ask me what rock we’ve been hiding under.
“When folk find out who we are, so many go out of their way to get involved, which is really heart-warming.”
