Barretstown

In the autumn of 1995, thanks to the American screen legend Paul Newman and the 'Hole in the Wall Gang', the first group of children from Belarus came to Barretstown Castle in Kildare. The Camp is a very specialised holiday centre, which takes children from all over Europe with cancer or serious blood diseases to enjoy a holiday with excellent but unobtrusive medical supervision. These special children, who number in the region of 15-20 every year, come to Ireland in September and are accompanied by two doctors and a translator.

They spend two weeks with the Barretstown Camp and their final week with the Bubble Gum Club charity. These groups offer the children the experience of a wonderful holiday with supervised medical care, which they would not have previously encountered. The Chernobyl Children's Project is delighted to be involved with the Barretstown Camp whose work with seriously ill children has been truly inspirational.

Adi Roche, long-time admirer of this work has little doubt about how important a part the Camp has played in the lives of so many children whose lives have been blighted by the fallout from the Chernobyl explosion, children that previously had not received the specialist care and attention on offer at Barretstown.

"These are the children who are normally left behind - the forgotten ones. They are the children of whom we often despair and feel that there is nothing we can do to ease their emotional pain, the pain of being forgotten. Now, due to the great kindness of the people at Barretstown, they are no longer the forgotten ones, but the most special of Chernobyl children."
(Adi Roche)

Click here for the Barretstown Website: http://www.barretstown.org/