Douzelage Project: The Road to Ukraine

The Douzelage Presidency was recently kindly invited by Douzelage Siret. We held our board meeting there and were able to visit Ukraine. As you probably all know by now: Ukraine is very, very close to Siret.

We travelled to Kamenets, a beautiful town 130 km from Siret in North East direction under safe surveillance of Mihai Mihaiescu Aniuk and visited the governor of this region, former mayor of Kamenets, Myhailo Simashkevich (Михайло Сімашкевич) who left for Donbass (with aid material for the front) right after our lunch together.
Kamenets more than doubled its number of inhabitants since the war.
The people we met were all proud to have visitors from Europe and felt supported; wanted to explain their situation, their initiatives, their obstacles and their joint effort which leads to impressive results.

I can be much more comprehensive about this visit, how it made a huge impression on us to visit a country at war, meet people whose lives have been completely turned upside down, but did not lose their spirit and dedication, but Mette already wrote an impressive article on our visit. I kindly ask all of you to read it, click here.

What does Ukraine need?
As we as Douzelage donated warmheartedly one year ago, with the enthusiastic input of many of us, we feel humble to ask you again, but let me assure you that Ukraine is in need of literally anything and everything.

One of the most important needs is a way to get from A to B.

Therefore we would like to launch “Road to Ukraine”
If every town could donate around € 1.000 we would be able to buy one or even two mini busses (8 + 1), which can be driven with normal car licenses. We will investigate fair prices and good vehicles and get back to you with more specific info.

Donations can be transferred to the Douzelage Europe account, indicating ‘Road to Ukraine’.
IBAN: NL02 RABO 0310 4918 78
BIC: RABONL2U

If you start a funding activity in your towns, please keep us posted and send us info on your initiative(s). We can then post it on the Douzelage Europe website: www.douzelage.eu

We sincerely hope that Douzelage will support this initiative: the people of the region of Kamenets will be so grateful and be able to help so many Ukrainians that are on the run.