Dr. Gary Stillwagon, accustomed to a comfortable life in metro Atlanta, wasn't prepared to see kids living in gangs in underground sewers, an orphanage with little other than four walls, or a school with no plumbing and rusting World War II-era desks.

"They said we were going to encounter younger kids," Stillwagon said of his first trip to the Ukraine in 1995.

Courtesy Dr. Gary Stillwagon (ENLARGE)

Gary Stillwagon, shown with children from an orphanage in Kazilivka, goes to Ukraine about twice a year.

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"But until you see it, it is hard to get a grasp on what it is going to be like."

Stillwagon had worked with the poor in Techwood Homes and other poor inner city neighborhoods since about 1990.

"But we just don't have anything approaching [the Ukraine's] magnitude," he said.

He was visiting in 1995 with Vasily Lantukh, a Ukrainian who immigrated to Georgia in 1990, and other members of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Sandy Springs. The church emphasizes missions, giving $24 out of every $100 it takes in to support programs across the world. It has sent short-term mission teams to the Ukraine for years.

The poverty was nothing new to Lantukh.

Near his home village of Kazilivka, a government school had no running water.

"Almost 200 kids, and not even a shower inside or a toilet," Lantukh said.

It was not a lack of will that kept the citizens from improving things, Stillwagon would discover. It was simply a lack of resources. The average income in the Ukraine is about $200 U.S. per month,

Stillwagon, a radiation oncologist with Radiotherapy Clinics of Georgia, talked to the mayor and a school director, asking if there were people who could install the water lines and equipment if he were able to get them.

"You are looking at one of them," the director replied.

Stillwagon's life changed at that point.

He dipped into his own money to buy the materials. True to their word, the director and mayor organized local people to dig lines for water and install equipment to bring clean, hot water to the school.

Lantukh said, "And it was just the beginning. Then, it was project after project."

Stillwagon has been back nine times since. Each time, he has used his own money to provide for the needs he sees there, from giving food and help to the estimated 200,000 children living on the streets in Kiev, the major city, to buying games and toys for children in the orphanage near Kazilivka or starting the region's first shelter and counseling center for women.

"The big thing is being captured by the need and that I am blessed to have the mind and the resources that I do, and I am just driven to do that. Either you have the heart for it or you don't," Stillwagon said.

He started a nonprofit two years ago, StrugglingKids, and gets some donations, but none of the money goes toward overhead. He uses 100 percent of the donations for the needs in the Ukraine, paying his own transportation costs to deliver the help.

He is changing Ukraine one child at a time, said Marilee Davis, a friend of Stillwagon.

For information: www.strugglingkids.com