Finding a Child Isn’t Enough — Why Emile Foundation Brings Their Families to Safety Too

While much of the world enjoys a peaceful summer, the war in Ukraine has not stopped. Neither has the work of the Emile Foundation. Most organizations working on Ukraine’s abducted children stop once a child has been traced, located, and identified. That moment is treated as the finish line. At the Emile Foundation, it is treated as the halfway point.

Finding a child is not the same as bringing a family to safety

Behind the headlines, another quiet but deeply significant milestone has been reached this summer: more abducted children traced. More relatives found. And more families evacuated from the front line in the Kherson region to safety.

Locating a child answers a question a family has carried for years. But it does nothing to change the fact that the family itself may still be living under shelling, cut off from services, or trapped in a region with no safe way out. Tracing a child while leaving their family in danger is, at best, half the job.

The work begins before the children are found

It would be easy to assume this work starts with locating a missing child. In practice, it starts earlier — with finding that child’s family.

For more than four years, many relatives of abducted children have been left behind: forgotten by the system, difficult to reach, and often completely alone in their search. The Emile Foundation’s approach runs two tracks simultaneously — tracing the missing child, while also locating and reconnecting with the family who has been searching for them.

Once contact with a family is re-established, the Foundation helps them prepare the legal documentation and consent forms required to move a case forward. Where necessary, this includes evacuating the family from the Kherson region to safety — a step that goes well beyond what tracing alone requires.

Evacuation is only the beginning of the support a family receives. The Emile Foundation provides:

• Free accommodation
• Financial assistance
• Legal support
• Psychological care
• Ongoing social support

The Foundation remains beside each family through every stage of this process — not as a one-time intervention, but as a sustained presence for as long as it’s needed.

This dual-track approach is already showing results. For one of the institutions at the center of the Foundation’s work — the Oleshky Children’s Boarding School in Kherson — the Emile Foundation has now traced, located, and identified around 80% of the children who were abducted from the school. But tracing was never the finish line here; it is the step that makes the harder work — reconnecting families and bringing them to safety — possible in the first place.

This week: another family, another story

This week, following another evacuation from the Kherson region, the Emile Foundation was able to help another family reach safety.

Their story is a difficult one. The mother had already lost her husband and her son — both killed by Russian forces. Her daughters were abducted.

Every family the Foundation meets carries its own, singular tragedy. Every story is a reminder that behind every statistic in this crisis is a mother, a father, a grandmother, or a child whose life has been shattered by this war.

While many spend this summer at rest, these families continue to live with uncertainty, grief, and hope in equal measure.

The work continues

The Emile Foundation will continue to search. It will continue to trace. It will continue to find families who have been forgotten, bring them to safety, and stand beside them until every possible child is reunited with those who love them.

None of this work would be possible without the trust and support of everyone who makes it happen.