Editor TLN
The creator of the charity is Dr. Ievkov. Help those fleeing the conflict in Ukraine. The Orthodox youth association “Kinonia” collaborates with the initiative. Migrants receive assistance to process their documents, find accommodation and even to return to their homes in Ukraine, Belarus or Kazakhstan.
Moscow () – In Saint Petersburg there is a charitable entity that has been operating for a few years and was created by the young doctor Sergei Ievkov (see photo), now in his thirties. When he started working at the hospital he realized that he was not interested in a career, seeing how inaccessible public health was for so many people.
A small group of like-minded people formed around Ievkov and began to bring the mobile clinic to life. Now, the doctors are looking for a more stable headquarters with greater capacity.
At the moment, the clinic, which treats one patient at a time, is treating a 40-year-old Ukrainian woman who arrived in St. Petersburg without documents. Svetlana is sick with AIDS and has a tumor, but her health problems manifested themselves after she arrived in Russia a month ago, when she was fleeing from a small town in the breakaway republic of Donetsk. They are trying to admit her to a hospital, according to Ievkov. Sever.Realiiand they hope to be able to attend to their emergency, thanks to the collaboration of colleagues from another association, “Humanitarian Action”.
The mobile clinic provides patients with screenings for infections of social importance, vaccinations against Covid-19 and the flu, and even an ophthalmology service. Ievkov studied for eight months at a Moscow school of professional philanthropy, officially became a director of a non-profit organization and pursued many individual and group projects.
Partially heir to the Soviet past, the Russian Constitution guarantees health care to all citizens, but the reality is very different. Ievkov felt compelled to act as he saw the needs of migrant workers, even before the pandemic and the war. His greatest care is children, and he tries to prevent illnesses that could affect them for the rest of their lives.
As the doctor says, “I had to find out about the rights of the weakest and learn to be a street doctor.” Our project is also maintained thanks to the collaboration of the “Kinonia” Orthodox Youth Association, which has organized several mobile clinic units, using “Gazel” vans adapted to health needs “Our patients feel safe, accompanied by people who understand them, even if all we do is organize the normal services of a small doctor’s office.”
Ievkov’s sayings are corroborated by Vitalij Kurdeko, a lay collaborator of the churches of the Annunciation and the Nativity of Christ in Piskarevo, a large central street in St. Petersburg. Kurdeko is in charge of the social and charitable initiatives of the church and has collaborated with Kinonia since 2015. Thanks to these initiatives, he understood what the Scripture says, that ‘faith without works is dead’.
Kurdeko explains that “before I became an active believer I was like everyone else, I judged people and despised the homeless, the homeless. But then I realized that they are the lepers of the 21st century, whom the society has turned its back. With the youth of the parish he also organized a canteen on Tukhacevskaya, which is very popular, especially on Sundays.
The young people help migrants process their documents, find accommodation and return to their homes in Ukraine, Belarus or Kazakhstan, acting as a link with the corresponding consulates. Until February 24, the relationship with the Ukrainian embassy was excellent, the same diplomats sent the poor and sick who needed help. Today, charity is also slowed down by the war, but it does not stop.
