Throng

6:30pm - Friday, March 5 on ABC1

This week's episode of Can We Help? contains a story so remarkable that an entire episode has been dedicated to it. It begins in Chernobyl, the site of the infamous nuclear accident that shook the world and led to great human suffering. But from tragedy came something good - an act of great kindness and relationships that crossed borders and changed lives.

On 26 April 1986, unit four of the Chernobyl power station exploded. The reactor released 90 times as much radiation as the Hiroshima bomb causing immediate deaths and the evacuation of almost 100,000 people. Children were the most susceptible to the radiation and were the hardest hit. In some cases up to half of the children in nearby towns became ill. For families it was an ongoing struggle to make ends meet.

Tonight's story is about Tim Rutter, a Victorian man who was so moved by the tragedy of Chernobyl and the devastating effect it had on families that he felt he had to help. Tim's son Clive contacted Can We Help? hoping the team could arrange for his dad to meet the people involved with the Nadja fund - a Ukraine charity that Tim has been supporting for more than a decade. Tim considers the people who run the charity to be his 'other family', particularly the manager of the fund, Svetlana Pivovar whom he has never met.

Can We Help? honours Tim's long-term contribution and generosity by flying him to Kiev to unite him with Svetlana and some of the families of the Nadja fund, in whose lives Tim looms large. The celebration in Kiev is powerful, moving and will be remembered for a lifetime by all those involved.

http://abc.net.au/iview/