OREANDA-NEWS. December 28, 2012. The charitable fund H. Stepic CEE Charity, founded by Herbert Stepic, CEO of Raiffeisen Bank International (Austria), has financed buying a bus for the youngest schoolchildren of #14 Uzhgorod Gipsy School (the oldest Gipsy school in Europe, established in 1926). The bus will provide transporting service for 24 pupils, aged 6-12, who live not only in Uzhgorov, but in the neighboring village of Kontsevo in 5 kilometers from the city. A solemn ceremony of transferring the bus to the school was held on 20 December, 2012.

"Buying a school bus will give Gipsy children a chance for an efficient study at school, without missing lessons because of the impossibility to get to school, specifically in winter months", says the project initiator, Head of the Charitable Organization “Helping Hand” Roman Stoika. "Implementation of the project will make for a complex development and education of the schoolchildren, their better integration in the society", he added.

"We are happy that the charitable organization, founded by the head of our banking group, has chosen Transcarpathia as an object for its charity", notes Sergii Boiko, Executive Director of Zakarpattya Regional Directorate of Raiffeisen Bank Aval. "A number of social programs, being introduced by our bank , have now been added by projects of our Austrian colleagues, and today we have a plenty of such goodwill initiatives in Ukraine, namely: in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv regions, and now – in the Transcarpathian region", added Mr. Boiko.