Roosendaal Helps! is an initiative of the project group Roosendaal-Mogilev of the Pax Christi Kinderhulp organisation. On 26 September 2003 they officially presented themselves as the project group that will in the years to come arrange for children from Belarus to visit for a six-week holiday in Roosendaal with host families.

With the aid of sponsoring and donations the project group ensures that each year a group of children from Mogilev can come to Roosendaal to stay with host families and escape their home region which is suffering from bad times.

Byelex designed and built, and currently hosts, the website roosendaalhelpt.com  which, in addition to providing information on the project, administers the details of current and potential host families, as well as sponsors and donors.

Mogilev is an important industrial area in Belarus (White Russia). The capital, also by the name of Mogilev, is more than 700 years old. When the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl took place in 1986, Mogilev was washed with nuclear radiation from the explosion. The people who lived in this area were struck with the highest level of nuclear radiation ever in our nuclear age. The impact on Mogilev has been enormous.

Those who have been afflicted have a sharply increased risk of disease because their immune system has been compromised. They have had to leave their birth towns behind as dead places. What’s more, there is often even a social stigma on these people.