Mel Gibson's girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva brought together a circle of friends on Thursday evening at a benefit to support Chernobyl Children's Project International's cardiac surgery program.
At the February 11 event at Romanov Restaurant & Lounge in Studio City, Grigorieva performed her charity single, Angel, available on iTunes and through her website at Oksana.fm.
Joined at the benefit by Mel Gibson, Grigorieva asked her friends to support the efforts of the charity to bring hope to children in Chernobyl affected regions of Ukraine and Belarus.
Adi Roche, founder of CCPI and in from Ireland, vividly described the situation in Chernobyl regions today, where families and communities still suffer medical, social and economic consequences of the 1986 nuclear accident. She told the guests, “The images from Chernobyl are different from the deeply disturbing images of war that we see on our TV screens every night, where one can see the immediacy of bullets and bombs. But the war of Chernobyl is none the less deadly – it just happens to be invisible, slowly permeating everything, affecting the very cycle of life itself.”
Today in Ukraine, 6000 children are born every year with genetic heart defects. More than half of these children will not get the surgery they need to survive and will die. Funds raised at the benefit will allow Chernobyl Children’s Project International to send volunteer surgery teams to Ukraine and Belarus to operate on children for free and train local physicians. Grigorieva invited her guests to see their donations put into action by visiting her blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages over the next few weeks to see photos of children who receive life saving surgeries in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Oksana Grigorieva is a classically trained pianist and singer who recently wrote and produced her own album, Beautiful Heartache.
Chernobyl Children’s Project International is a 501c3 non profit based in the USA and Ireland that helps children and families in Belarus and Ukraine who suffer socially, medically and economically from the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. Find out more here.
Source: Chernobyl Children International
