Clara Pascal

In 1995, Clara J. Pascal traveled to Ukraine with a church group. On this trip, she visited an orphanage and personally witnessed the horrible conditions being suffered by helplesss and defenceless children and met the child that eventually became her son. That trip changed her life and the lives of thousands of children. She abandoned her film career, and devoted her life to providing a better life for orphans in Ukraine.

Upon returning to the United States, she became affiliated with Universal Aid for Children and founded its Ukranian division. The program began as a medical mission - to find volunteer doctors to correct serious but treatable medical conditions that were being ignored. Through her efforts, numerous western medical professionals have traveled to Ukraine to donate their services and time to perform surgeries on children with a variety of correctable deformities.

Clara then worked at training and assisting local professionals to address the needs of the thousands of abandoned and displaced children. Today, the orgonization she built to help these children services more than 2,000 children of all ages in 23 different shelters. She has overseen the construction and improvement of these facilities ensuring that the place these children call home changed from dilapidated buildings into healing, harmonious environments. Her organization offers nutrition, heath care, psychological counseling, and education to these orphans. At the holidays Clara ploys Santa to thousands of children.

Clara also began the Orphaned Teen Scholarship Program in Ukraine to enable orphans coming of age to have a chance at higher education or vocational training. Through this program, over 150 children have gone on to some level of higher education, including law school and medical school. Many return to mentor younger children in the orphanages.

Clara has built this organization by encouraging countless people to volunteer their time and money to the cause of these children half a world away. She organizes volunteer trips to Ukraine and encourages sponsors and other volunteers to visit Ukraine and witness firsthand the plight of these orphaned children.

Clara currently calls Coral Gables home, although she spends a great deal of time in the Ukraine and other parts of the world. In 1997, she adopted her son Luke, two years to the doy after meeting him for the first time on her first visit to an orphanage in Ukraine.

Clara Pascal holds her 1999 Kathryn Lehman Weiner Advocate of Children Award with Universal Aid for Children Executive Director Lorri Kellogg. Ms. Pascal was also the recent recipient of Junior League of Miami's "Women Who Make a Difference" Award.