The primary purpose of the Brenna Engle Foundation (the "Foundation") is to provide financial support to Brenna’s Home for Underprivileged Children in Lutsk, Ukraine. The Foundation was established following the death of three-year old Brenna Engle in a tragic automobile and truck accident in February 2005.
After Brenna’s death, her parents, Richard and Donna Engle, requested that donations in lieu of flowers be made to the Tabitha Children’s Program in Lutsk, Ukraine, which was run through the Resurrection Baptist Church in Lutsk by a missionary family from the Hyde Park (NY) Baptist Church, where Donna had attended services. Donna and Richard were familiar with the works of the Tabitha program and believed that sending donations there would be a fitting memorial to Brenna and a worthwhile cause for the hundreds of people who responded to Brenna’s untimely death with an outpouring of emotion and support.
The Tabitha program was started in 2001 in Lutsk, Ukraine, by Victor Melnychuk and Valla Yanikofski. It began with feeding four small children and has expanded over the years to provide educational and recreational programs and a daily hot meal for more than 50 children. Tom and Michele Weight and their family went from Hyde Park, NY to support this work and establish other programs through the Resurrection Baptist Church in Lutsk.
In the city of Lutsk there are many children living in the street, with abusive and alcoholic parents, or with relatives unable to properly care for them. Through the Tabitha program, the children are fed a healthy lunch and given nutritional supplements six days each week. For some of them it is their only good meal of the day. The program has resulted in much-improved general health for the children who attend it.
During the winter of 2004-2005, a brother and sister in their early teens showed up at the Tabitha program. They were very withdrawn and would not make eye contact. The early signs of frostbite were visible on their hands. Their parents were alcoholics, and the family had been living in a house with no heat, electricity, or running water for at least two years. After the parents signed over legal custody, a room at the Resurrection Church was converted to a temporary bedroom with beds, blankets, a desk, and games for the two children. The Ukrainian church leaders, along with the Weights, felt moved to establish an orphanage-style "home" for children in similar dire circumstances, but lacked the funding to proceed.
After Brenna Engle’s death, the donations to the Tabitha program in her memory were much more than expected, and were sufficient to provide the seed money to lay the financial foundation to support an orphanage. Donna and Richard were pleased with the idea, as was the Resurrection Church. "Brenna’s Home for Underprivileged Children" became a reality shortly thereafter.
