About the House


Opika House is a place where young mothers:
- Live with their children and care for themselves and their child;
- Learn to work the land together, growing food in the garden and canning it for the winter;
- Help each other with childcare, so that they may work; and
- Provide support and advice for each another and be good neighbors to those around them.


Realities of the Housing Market in Ukraine

The single largest problem for teens leaving orphanages is housing. For young boarding school graduates, this may mean sleeping on a cot in a room with 3-4 other people.  For a teen mother, this often means giving up her child.  For Ukraine, this means entirely new generations of children growing up in institutions.  For Opika, assisting young mothers has simply meant working with the mother, not the child . . . until now.

Rent in Ukraine has sky-rocketed, with places in Zakarpattia among the worst. Opika searched for a house for more than a year before finding one that was affordable and available.  This house, in the condition you see it here, cost 10,000 Euros (12,500 US$).  Uzhgorod (just 20 minutes away from Perechyn and where most graduates seek work) is a bordertown, a gateway to the European Union.  Apartments and houses in Uzhgorod now demand Western prices with a modest two-bedroom apartment costing as much as $200K-$300K (150,000-230,000 Euros)  to buy and as much as $150-300 (115-230 Euros) a month to rent. The average income for a new, working graduate is around 800 hryvnia (about $100; 125 Euros) per month.

The ladies of Opika have dreamed of starting Opika House for many years.  This is a holistic place where the Opika staff, volunteers, and mentors can work with both the girl and the child in a symbiotic way, preparing them both to create healthy family situations for the future and thus interrupting the cycling of children back into the system.  Opika has does not exclude the father in this process.  Quite the contrary, the idea is for this place to help the girls transition into a more stable family life on her own and that includes stable, healthy, loving relationships.  The mothers are expected to work, pay rent, and contribute to their communal household just as they would in a regular family situation.