Our Team
Jessica Wyman
is the founder of House of Compassion, which began officially in January of 2017. Jessica has been working with orphans in Ukraine since 1997 and has dreamed of starting an orphanage since she was four years old. Jessica is excited to be heading up this meaningful project, and is grateful for all those who have helped in this journey toward opening an orphanage in Ukraine.
Galina Pomerlan
joined House of Compassion as a volunteer in Fall 2019, but has been working with orphans since 2012. Galya has a huge heart for orphans and her desire, above all else, is to show Jesus and His practical, real love to the children no one wants. She and her team put on programs every Monday afternoon in a large orphanage outside of the city, to spend time with the kids and to let them know they are not alone until the full-scale invasion broke out in 2022.
Galina Turchina
is an engineer by profession, but began working with House of Compassion in the fall of 2016. She is and always has been an integral part of this project and we are so grateful to have her. Galina kept the paperwork moving, the flowers and trees beautiful, and us within the applicable laws as we moved forward, until she and her family evacuated Zaporizhzhia in early 2022. Now working remotely, she and her husband live near Milan, Italy, so their daughter can have a safe place to be a child, but they cannot wait to come home.
Jason Wyman
works as an architect in Greenwich, CT. He has worked faithfully with Ukrainian orphans throughout his high school years and is passionate about his role in this project. Jason has worked with local engineers and our general contractor as the architect behind what will become House of Compassion’s main house situated on ten acres outside of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
Igor Puzenko
began working with House of Compassion in March 2017 and is a vital part of our team. He has a huge heart for kids and has been involved in floor-ball ministry, youth camps, and YoungLife leadership at his church. Growing up as an orphan himself, Igor understands what it is like to be a child in the orphanage system. He believes and has come to know personally that God Himself is the Father to the fatherless and it is He who cares the most for orphans.
Our Founder
Jessica Wyman first began dreaming of opening a home for orphans when she was four years old. Growing up she often wondered where the children were that she already loved and prayed God would protect them from evil. In 1997 Jessica went on her first overseas trip at fourteen years old, volunteering at a summer camp for orphaned and disadvantaged children and finally put faces to her dream. The camp was located in Kyiv, Ukraine. Over the years, she served not only in Ukraine but in a children’s hospital in Romania working with abandoned children and at a girls’ home in the mountains of Honduras. Her love for Ukraine, however, remained strong, and on her 26th birthday she moved to Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, and felt like she had finally come home.
Seven years of volunteering at a large state-run orphanage brought her face-to-face with the orphan crisis that couldn’t be overcome with birthday cakes and English classes. It became personal when the children she knew for all those years became the statistics on the sidelines of life. Desperate to give the orphaned children a chance at a better life, to be able to break the cycle they had been thrown into, to find healing and the overwhelming love of God for them, House of Compassion was born. In 2016 the vision was written down and land was purchased just south of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
Our Board of Directors
Jessica Wyman
Chair
Pastor John Welsh
Dennis Wyman
Vice-chair
Kimberly Spead
Caren Bream
Secretary
Kara May Lapierre
Deborah Wyman
Treasurer