From swimming to marathon to help others

Galina Bondarenko came to the sport 5.5 years ago. It all started with swimming school. At first, the goal was to learn the technique of swimming, and then she was so carried away and inspired that she decided to swim across the Bosphorus. After the first season of open water, she began to run, and at the beginning of 2023 she is learning to cross-country ski.

She started doing charity work in high school: at the Lyceum, the New Year’s gala concert was always a charity concert with tickets, an auction and a fair.

“I got acquainted with the world of the “adult” NGO at the age of 18. I accidentally found out that there would be “Games of Winners” in Moscow: an olympiad for children who had recovered from cancer, in the past a project of the “Give Life” foundation. And I realized that I would really like to be involved in such an event and wrote a letter to the organizers,” she says.

After that, Galina helped in the hospital for some time, worked in one of the funds, but realized that it was much more comfortable for her to be an eventful volunteer, to support the actions of familiar funds.

Then she decided not just to play sports, but to organize collections to help funds. So there was a collection in which she talked about her desire to cross the Bosphorus:

“Actually, I’m not a swimmer at all, but a makeup artist from Moscow, and 10 months ago I came to the pool for the right technique for medical reasons,” she began the message at the fundraising site. Alas, she could not achieve the collection goal:

“When you tell people who are far from sports that you are going to sail through the Bosphorus, they usually lose their speech. And I really wanted to add meaning to this “feat”. So I decided to make the first collection of 65,000 rubles. As a result, I collected 1900 rubles. Terribly upset, but decided not to throw this story. And now I can confidently call myself an event volunteer and benefactor. I am very comfortable giving my tithing not only with regular donations, but also in this way.”

Galina’s last collection was running: she decided to run a marathon to help our foundation. This time she wanted to raise 42,200 rubles (yes, as a reminder of the length of the marathon distance). As a result, 50 people supported, and in total they managed to collect 45,000 rubles.

Galina does not stop there, but always thinks about the main thing: helping others.

All the money raised after the marathon went to the work of Nochlezhka. Since it was a private donation, the money was distributed among several projects.