Salvation Army receives £50,000 for Beslan children camp from Sun readers

The Salvation Army has received £50,000 from readers of the Sun, the UK's best-selling daily newspaper, to run a camp for children and families affected by the Beslan school tragedy of September 2004. Over 330 schoolchildren, teachers and adults died and hundreds were injured at the end of the siege in School Number One in the Southern Russian town last year. Many of the children were severely traumatised by events, and the camp has been set up as part of a long period of recovery and rehabilitation.

A team of Salvation Army staff will be taking 60 children to the holiday camp along with 20 of their family members for a two-week break. Staff are working with an experienced team, including professional psychologists, to ensure that the camp is part of the ongoing recovery process and a positive step forward for the families.

'We are very grateful to Sun readers for their generous donation that is enabling us to run this camp for the Beslan children,' said Lieut-Colonel Bo Brekke, Chief Secretary for The Salvation Army’s Eastern Europe Territory. 'We are so pleased to be able to work in the Beslan community and do what we can to support the hundreds of families affected. We hope that the camp will help the children and their families come to terms with this terrible tragedy and to look to the future with hope and optimism.'

The Salvation Army is an international Christian church and charity working in 109 countries and throughout Eastern Europe with programmes in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Georgia. This work includes homelessness programmes, medical programmes, outreach project for homeless children and after-school programmes.