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Las Vegas native raising hundreds of thousands for Ukraine orphan relief amid Russian invasion

Ukraine Mykolaiv orphanage
Posted at 9:36 PM, Feb 28, 2022
and last updated 2022-03-01 02:14:40-05

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Mark Davis, founding director of Abundance International, toured a stone-walled bomb shelter Monday surrounded by the faces of the innocent thrown into a warzone by Russian aggression in Ukraine.

His orphanage in Mykolaiv, a town in Southern Ukraine, has been under the threat of Russian attack since Friday when troops entered the village, and air raid sirens joins the symphony of crying toddlers in bouncing off the walls.

Davis's team said the kids, mostly between one and four years old, haven't seen the sun in days.

Russians invaded, he said wasn't worried about bullets and bombs but rather that the kids would be forgotten.

"They have no voice of their own," he said. "They're not the attention of anybody. They slip through the cracks, and then they die."

Davis said he couldn't watch that happen so, instead of returning to his home in Las Vegas, he launched a campaign currently raising nearly $300,000 for his orphanages and many more around the country.

In Ukrainian, Orphanage Director Natalia Varoslovovna said food and medicine have been in short supply and she feared power outages could make cooking for the children difficult.

Davis, however, has seen hope in expanding his aid network and providing for more of the roughly 100,000 orphans in the country.

"Today we had a break through," he said in a video announcing his plans to build a network of people in Ukraine to gather supplies and deliver them to orphanages.

"The need is going to come," he said, "and if we don't answer it, I don't want to say it, but this is a life or death situation."

Anyone interested in helping Abundance International can give by clicking here.