Yana Stepanenko will run a marathon on prostheses
Yana Stepanenko, a 12-year-old Ukrainian girl who lost both her legs in a rocket attack on the Kramatorsk railway station, will take part in the Boston Marathon!
The girl will run a kilometre on prostheses to fulfil her defender's dream and demonstrate to the world the resilience of the Ukrainian people.
On 8 April 2022, Yana Stepanenko lost both her legs as a result of a terrorist attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk. The photo of her being carried in the arms of a surgeon at St Nicholas Children's Hospital of the First Medical Association of Lviv went viral. Yana received her first prostheses for walking and running in the United States. Last summer, after a year of rehabilitation abroad, she returned to Ukraine. Here, Yana continued her rehabilitation and has already received new artificial limbs for walking in the UNBROKEN prosthetics workshop.
By participating in the world-famous marathon, the young Ukrainian wants to remind the world that the war in her country continues, children and adults continue to suffer and die, thousands of lives are maimed and the number of people with amputations is growing every day. But despite all this, Ukrainians remain unbreakable.
Another goal of Yana's in Boston is charitable. It is to raise money for a sports prosthesis for a severely wounded defender, a patient of the NESZLAMNI Centre, who lost his limb in the war. The girl wants him to be able to run like her.
Oleksandr Ryasnyi has been serving since 2011, the year Yana was born. He is from Zaporizhzhia. He was in the ATO, then in the JFO, and then a full-scale war. He was defending his native Zaporizhzhia area when a shell exploded near him last September. He lost his right leg. Now he is getting used to a conventional prosthesis, plans to return to service and dreams of running.
The dobro.ua fundraising team will accompany Yana throughout the race and training to constantly remind him that the main goal is to raise funds for a sports prosthesis for Oleksandr.
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