18 November 2011 Veronica Ferres was presented in Berlin as the official patron of the Ark Children’s Foundation. In this role she will focus in the future, especially the important issue of education.After all, education is for children from socially disadvantaged families usually the only way to escape the cycle of poverty.

The Ark Children’s Foundation supports in particular the establishment of additional facilities at the children’s and youth work “Die Arche”. In its facilities the “Ark” offers children a full day free, hot meal, help with homework, meaningful pastimes, sports and music, and especially a lot of attention. Because children need confirmation of their confidence. You need to feel to be important and to be loved. Many children in this country are not experiencing the home unfortunately.

“The Ark”, it has also taken on the task publicly draw attention to shortcomings in our society, so that children are increasingly at the center again. For this, the management of the “Arche” also seeks dialogue with business and politics and brings in experience from their work with a. For his commitment was the director and founder of the “Ark”, Bernd Siggelkow, awarded the “Order of Merit of the State of Berlin” and the “Order of Merit”. And also “The Ark” was itself among others honored with the “Carl von Ossietzky Medal of the International League for Human Rights” and the “Hanse-Merkur Award for Child Protection”.

The Christian Children’s and Youth was founded in 1995 in Berlin.Meanwhile, the “Ark” at ten locations in Germany and actively reaches more than 2,000 children and adolescents. The opening of new facilities is planned, because the demand is unfortunately enormous. However, the tasks that took over the club, he can only cope with assistance. The work of the “Arche” is funded 100 percent by donations.

Education is therefore not be the only subject for which Veronica Ferres advocates. She promised Ark founder Bernd Siggelkow also help in finding support. For every penny collected is an investment in our children and therefore in our present and future.

Veronica Ferres – International ambassador for HADASSAH
Veronica Ferres campaigns worldwide as “Hadassah International Ambassador” for the mission, a to create through healing, teaching, and research a peaceful coexistence of cultures and religions in the Middle East. Veronica Ferres accepts first Hadassah project patron of the intensive care unit of Children’s Hospital in Jerusalem Hadassah in Ein Kerem, which urgently needs to be renovated and expanded.In Jerusalem’s largest children’s hospital, a clinic of the University Hospital Hadassah in Ein Kerem, small patients are treated with serious illnesses at the highest medical level. It is a place of healing, reconciliation and understanding between peoples lived, because here in addition to Israeli Arab children also come from the northern neighborhoods of Jerusalem, the neighboring towns and villages and from the Palestinian territory. Even on the part of physicians working Israelis and Palestinians holding hands. At this unique place medicine is the key to peace. Veronica Ferres is one of the international conveyance of the Children’s Hospital and accepts as Hadassah International Ambassador not only in Germany an important role to support the pediatric intensive care unit, it works in tandem with the international Hadassah friends circles and other celebrities, the Hadassah Medical Center to help the world to promote.

Background: The Hadassah Medical Center
For nearly a century, the Hadassah Medical Center with its two hospitals in Jerusalem innovative and compassionate health care for all people, regardless of religion or ethnicity. Internationally recognized for his outstanding contribution in healing, teaching, research, and as a model for future peace in the Middle East, this scale-positing was nominated medical center for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. Treated at Hadassah annually five thousand of health workers nearly one million people.

The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU)
Built in 1981 in the Charlotte R. Bloomberg Mother and Child Center, the Pediatric ICU critically ill patients with modern and innovative care that enables them to complex surgical procedures, life-threatening trauma, severe childhood diseases, and other serious conditions to survive. Hadassah’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit is the main facility for intensive care for children in Jerusalem and supplied the entire Greater Jerusalem – more than one million people.

Hadassah as a bridge to peace
Hadassah’s PICU team, champions of importance equip Palestinian health personnel with expertise to supply their own population, forms of Palestinian doctors and nurses / inside in advanced pediatric care. Among patients are Palestinian children who have no access to these complex medical care otherwise. By working with Palestinian doctors Hadassah forms a bridge to peace through medicine.

Current situation
Hadassah’s PICU treated today with its eight inpatient beds 450-500 patients per year. Whether pediatric oncology, trauma, neurology, repairing a variety of congenital defects, the heart, brain, or gastrointestinal tract affect, Hadassah’s PICU is decisive for allowing the babies and children live a long and healthy life. Each week leads Hadassah by around five open-heart surgery for children, which are then placed in the intensive care unit. Hadassah, which houses the largest pediatric hematology-oncology department in Jerusalem, is the only center in the city that bone marrow transplants carried out in children.

Hadassah International and the German friends of the Hadassah Medical Center is a network of dedicated employees and numerous volunteers, the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem by the various offices in Germany, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico, Panama, Australia and Israel support from. There are groups of friends who support through their volunteer work also the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem in about 20 other countries.To advertise friends and supporters organized the Hadassah Medical Center through its global units regularly high-profile events such as concerts, gala dinners, art auctions or private viewings. The mission is to promote public relations and to raise funds to cover special needs and to support a variety of projects in the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem.

Veronica Ferres since 2009 supports the HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, a non-profit association, which, involved in South Africa in the Western Cape Province for HIV-positive and tuberculosis-ill people. Through its support HOPE Cape Town could do for the next three years, a doctor who is not only the young patients and their families medical care, but also in the training of health workers HOPE operates. Add to this the supervision of medical students from around the world who complete a so-called “elective student programs” in HOPE Cape Town as part of their medical studies.

HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis are a global challenge. The infection rates of these diseases are constantly rising. HOPE Cape Town believes that all have a responsibility to cooperate in the fight against HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis. The association provides creative, flexible solutions to tackle problems as needed and fights for education, prevention, treatment, research and a better management of the disease and its sufferers.

HOPE Cape Town was founded in 2001 by Rev Fr Stefan Hippler and works financially supported by donations from individuals, organizations and agencies in order to offer all necessary services at the community level can: networking, training, treatment and counseling. The organization is funded entirely by private donations and sponsorship.

A sample of international projects of HOPE Cape Town Asssociation:
2001, Ithemba station, the Department of Infectious Diseases, was opened by the HOPE Tygerberg Children’s Hospital. The aim is to give the children an intensive treatment, rehabilitation and education in a child-friendly and family environment.

2002 founded HOPE Cape Town the Health Workers’ Project, a hitherto unique initiative which forms the centerpiece of the organization. The HOPE health workers receive from HOPE Cape Town intensive training in all medical and social aspects of HIV and AIDS. In the various township communities in the greater Cape Town, where they live, they take care of locally by sufferers. The now 24 HOPE health workers lead among others psychosocial counseling and HIV testing, make home visits to patients, help with any problems with the medication and act as an interface to social institutions. As an employee of HOPE Cape Town they are each also part of the staff of the township clinics and there have their jobs. The concept of HOPE health worker as an integral part of clinical teams is a progressive innovation in the local health system that has been devised and implemented by HOPE Cape Town for the first time.

Since 2003 HOPE Cape Town also works together with traditional healers and is within the scope of this unique step, establish a referral system between them and Western clinics. In South Africa, consult the vast majority of the population, traditional healers. This “Sangoma” are thus an important social group, the correct information about HIV and AIDS can transmit and can adequately advise the population.

As patron committed Veronica Ferres for the “Children’s Hospice Burgholz”, which will be built from the end of 2012 in the heart of the Bergisches Land. The native of Soli Gerin has to this region a special relationship and I know that such a facility for seriously ill and dying children and adolescents in the city triangle Wuppertal-Solingen-Remscheid is urgently needed.

Responsibility for the project is the Bethe Foundation “Children’s Hospice Foundation Bergisches Land”, a dedicated consortium of Caritasverband Wuppertal / Solingen, Wuppertal and Diakonie.Together they manage the construction of the children’s hospice ecumenical solely from donations. Also for the further operation of the building, especially for accommodation of parents and siblings, continuously donations needed.

The “Children’s Hospice Burgholz” created in the extensive grounds of a former children’s home in a wonderful conservation area on the southern outskirts of Wuppertal. The tranquil wooded, yet close to city center will provide the guests of the house a great recreational value.

The house is able to accommodate up to 12 children. It also provides accommodation for parents and siblings, and is so to allow as part of short-term care terminally ill children and their families a relaxing break.

The new children’s hospice is to be a house of life, where children in spite of severe disease and approaching death can enjoy moments of happiness, find their parents relief and assistance and their siblings can enjoy the common family life.

Such children’s house, which stands as a children’s hospice and respite care is available, previously sorely missed by families affected in the Bergisch region.