Stories

Every year right before Thanksgiving, a wonderful charity called Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl holds their annual dinner, which took place last night. CCOC is a not-for-profit organization that evacuates children from the radioactive Chernobyl region and provides them with critical medical care, advanced medical equipment, new homes and an excellent education. It is a fantastic organization and one that the Goldberg family has been involved with for many years.

The dinner is always well attended and quite emotional. These poor children would be forgotten if not for the wonderful people involved with this group. The Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986 but the effects are far from over. 

Although CCOC has been able to safely evacuate 2,863 children to Israel (the only country that accepts them on a permanent basis), there are those who can not or will not leave their homes. For those children, CCOC airlifts medicine, the specialized equipment needed for their care and offers training for local physicians about radiation-induced illnesses. In addition, they built a mammography clinic to help combat the artificially high rates of breast cancer in the area. 

Those reading this may or may not be aware, but ASHOKA® means “removal of sorrow”. The theme for this year’s CCOC dinner was “Children at Heart”, so we couldn’t think of a more appropriate item to create for the silent auction than a diamond heart necklace with an ASHOKA® set in it. The heart along with the ASHOKA® makes a magical combination, one that we hope will inspire comfort, healing and hope to the children of Chernobyl for years to come. And, I am happy to report that it generated $22,000 for CCOC last night, the most of any item that was up for auction!

Wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving.