Tribune Excerpts

The following article appeared in the March 2008 Edition of the Macedonian Tribune

California MPO continues humanitarian work

Feeding the hungry, rebuilding school restrooms, providing Braillers for people with blindness are just a few of the many humanitarian projects recently completed in Macedonia by MPO “Brothers Miladinovi” – Southern California.

How do they do it? They built their chapter by supporting a primary objective – to help the needy in Macedonia. To that end, they solicit funds specifically for those projects. They also had help from family and friends in Macedonia.

“We would not have been able to achieve the results we did without the assistance of Cvetan Stevkovski and his niece who lives in Skopje and works in the mayor’s office. We thank them both for their time and efforts in seeing that the money was properly distributed and in overseeing the construction,” Jordan Atzeff wrote to the membership.

Stevkovski is a former member of the MPO Central Committee. The Rev. Gorgi Pacemski recently had been reassigned to Skopje after serving many years at St. Mary’s MOC, Whittier. When he saw the needy in his new parish Sveti (saint) Petka, he began Food for the Hungry Program.

The $2000 donation from the MPO provided three meals a day to the needy who looked to Sv. Petka for assistance for an entire month.

“Thank you for this very much needed help, especially to Braka Miladinovi Organization. It will be greatly appreciated from all those people in need. This month they will be eating from your giving hands.

“May God bless you all and again thank you so much,” reads the note Father George sent the MPO Chapter last September.

The restroom renovation was a much larger project. It needed someone on site to coordinate construction and $9000 to provide modern facilities to children, who were relieving themselves outside their school building in Skopje’s Gorno Lisice District.

Providing six Braillers to the School for the Blind in Skopje was much easier to accomplish. The chapter bought the machines for $3000 through the National Federation for the Blind in the US. Shipping the equipment proved to be the bottleneck, but Macedonia’s first Braillers arrived and are in use, thanks to the work of MPO “Brothers Miladinovi.”

The school has more than 40 students (K – 8) who live in the facility and others who live in the city and commute daily. It provides primary education as well as orientation skills, domestic education for self-sufficiency and some job skills such as reception/telephone work, sorting, packing, etc.

In addition, the chapter sent financial support to orphanages in Skopje and Bitola, the Institute for the Mentally Disabled (Skopie/Tetevo). It sent 40 children to summer camp and purchased supplies for the high school in Prilep.

“I’m proud of the direction our chapter has taken, and I know we have made a difference in the lives of many of our fellow Macedonians. I continue to encourage other chapters to follow our example and extend a helping hand to the many who are in need in Macedonia,” Atzeff wrote the membership.