It's not often that you meet someone like Zenia Kushpeta. She is the driving force behind the Dzherelo Children's Rehabilitation Centre in Lviv, Ukraine, and has devoted her life to helping persons with disabilities in Ukraine. In doing so, she has found the happiness and fulfillment that eludes many of us.

Dzherelo, which translates as "the source," focuses on physical rehabilitation and social integration of disabled children. It was founded in 1993 by Kushpeta, Oksana Kunanec-Swarnyk (a rehabilitation therapist from Toronto), and two Lviv residents, Myroslav Nykolayev and Mykola Swarnyk (both parents of children with cerebral palsy). The center is a testament to the initiative and persistence of its founders.

When Dzherelo opened, children with conditions such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, or autism were hidden from view in Ukraine. The public's attitude towards the disabled was largely fostered by the position of the Ukrainian government, which supported institutionalization over integration.

Kushpeta and her colleagues knew that there was an urgent need for services for the disabled in Ukraine, but even they were surprised by the scope of the need. Originally, official estimates had put the number of families with disabled children at 200; in truth, as Kushpeta and the other founders of Dzherelo discovered, the actual number in the Lviv region was well over 2,000 families.

Changing a society's attitudes towards the disabled and founding a donation-funded rehabilitation center would be an impressive achievement for any healthcare professional. What makes Kushpeta's achievement all the more remarkable is that her background isn't in healthcare – she's a former professor of music and a former concert pianist.

Kushpeta is the child of Ukrainian immigrants to Canada. She studied music at the University of Toronto, and after graduation, won a scholarship to the prestigious Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. At the Peabody, she studied under Leon Fleisher and, in 1978, she received a Master's degree in performance.

An extended two-year stay in Paris followed her studies, after which Kushpeta returned to Canada. She then worked for 10 years as a music instructor (at Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music and in the School of Music at Queen's University), as a pianist performing in solo recitals, and as a soloist touring with local orchestras.

But Kushpeta wanted something more. She had always been interested in social work, and a one-year sabbatical from Queen's provi