Tipperary charity leader to attend address by President Zelensky at Leinster House

Adi Roche, the Clonmel-born founder and Voluntary CEO of Chernobyl Children International, on invitation of the Ukrainian Government, has been invited to attend President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s state address in Leinster House this afternoon.

Adi’s invitation comes in recognition of her humanitarian work supporting the victims and survivors of Chernobyl in Ukraine, which has spanned 40 years and continues to this day.  Adi led the humanitarian first-response to the Chernobyl disaster back in 1986, which resulted in the founding of the Chernobyl Children International (CCI) charity, which has delivered over €108 million worth of humanitarian aid and programmes to the victims of the disaster in the affected regions.

As a result of these four decades of experience, CCI had the infrastructure to immediately respond nimbly and quickly following the invasion of Ukraine, via the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, in February 2022. 

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The charity were not only able to continue programmes, but also target areas of unique need.  This includes direct humanitarian aid deliveries, winterising projects and relocating its life-saving Cardiac Programme from Kharkiv and Kyiv to Lviv in the east.

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Since the beginning of the war and the invasion of the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plants, CCI have been advocating for all nuclear facilities be deemed a ‘No War Zone’ and for world leaders to invoke the Hague Convention which defines any attack on a nuclear facility to be a war crime.

As the only NGO recognised by the United Nations working with Chernobyl victims, Roche and CCI will lead national and international commemorations of the Chernobyl disaster in 2026, marking 40 years since the devastating nuclear accident.