You're reading: Canadian generosity eases Ukraine’s multiple crises

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2014, the well-organized Canadian-Ukrainian community was perhaps the best positioned to help in time of need.

Through umbrella organizations like the Ukrainian World Congress, representing more than 20 million Ukrainians, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and Canada-Ukraine Foundation, they mobilized their vast networks and reached into their deep pockets.

The Canadian government entrusted them to ensure the distribution of millions of dollars of non-lethal aid like night vision goggles, sleeping bags, boots, uniforms and other equipment. Separate diaspora groups pitched in as well. The Canada-Ukraine Foundation alone spent $615,000 in 2014 while completing 15 Ukraine-related projects. It plans to spend an additional $495,000 this year.

Canadian-inspired projects included dispatching surgeons to perform operations, first on gunshot victims from the EuroMaidan Revolution, and later soldiers wounded at the war front. Rehabilitation programs were implemented for widows and mothers of sons who died in the combat zone. Soldiers were given and trained to use NATO-standard life-saving first aid kits. A psychophysical rehabilitation center was set up for soldiers. Schools started being rebuilt in Donbas and drones supplied to the military.

Following are several projects spearheaded by Canadian groups:

 

Patriot Defence

 

Winnipeg native Marko Suprun and his wife Dr. Ulana Suprun, a trained radiologist, started to supply soldiers in late May 2014 with improved first aid kits after they realized that many deaths on the front were preventable. To date, they’ve distributed more than 15,700 IFAKs. More importantly, foreign and local instructors have trained more than 18,000 soldiers, in addition to 2,384 officer cadets in tactical medicine and combat lifesaver training. The group has since received $2.2 million in assistance and in-kind contributions, including $1 million from an anonymous Kyiv business that purchased the medical kit components for distribution. They’ve also indirectly distributed IFAKs and trained servicemen through a Canadian government initiative. Patriot Defense is affiliated with UWC, which covers office rental costs – Ulana Suprun heads the group’s humanitarian initiatives – their team of instructors has focused on training servicemen heading for the combat zone: border guards, armed forces, interior ministry, civilians, volunteer battalions, and the State Security Service, better known as the SBU.

The fact that the SBU has requested the trainings and buys the kits on its own for its special forces is the highest recognition the group has received, Marko Suprun said.

“Soldiers are our treasure. They’re an investment, the time and money put into them, you should protect that investment with medical care to save lives,” he said.

Marko Suprun added that the group is pushing for the Defense Ministry to raise medical standards and put them on equal footing with combat training.

“Education will win this war: Knowing how to shoot straight is as important as stopping a critical bleed,” he said.

That emphasis on training has involved the use of amputee war veterans. Better than using manikins, the veterans eagerly participate in simulations knowing that they can prevent the loss of more lives and limbs.

“Our research shows that one-third of all amputees lost a limb due to an infection because they weren’t (immediately) given antibiotics or would close wounds without cleaning them first,” he said.

They currently have instructors in the field this week training servicemen in Sloviansk, Svitlovodsk and Zhytomyr, averaging 200-400 personnel weekly. Also, with a $60,000 Australian grant, Patriot Defense has trained Kyiv’s new police patrols and has plans to train new patrol units in Lviv and Odesa.

Canadian Minister of International Trade Edward Fast and Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk will visit the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce to deliver the first installment of Improved First Aid Kits (IFAKs) for Ukrainian soldiers. medicine

Canadian Minister of International Trade Edward Fast (С), Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk (L) and director of the humanitarian initiative of the Ukrainian World Congress Patriot Defense Uliana Suprun present delivering the first installment of Improved First Aid Kits (IFAKs) for Ukrainian soldiers on Jan. 26 in Kyiv. © Volodymyr Petrov

 

Guardian Angels

 

Toronto-based League of Canadian Ukrainian Women opened a center for the psychophysical rehabilitation of soldiers at the Irpin Military Hospital near Kyiv in April. The project, called Guardian Angels, is introducing new approaches, such as the interactive rehabilitation and exercise system that the group acquired.

“The project is also exploring innovative approaches to psychological therapies for returning Ukrainian servicemen, modeled on outpatient programs for veterans carried out by North American non-government organizations,” said Canadian Kalyna Kardash, the project coordinator, on the group’s website.

The project also is aiming to establish physical medicine and rehabilitation departments at Ukraine’s leading universities in tandem with the Ukrainian government.

Canadian Lisa Shymko is the honorary chair of the Guardian Angels project and president of LUCW, and Bohdan Cherniawski is project coordinator and a health care consultant.

Launched in December in Toronto, the project raised more than $125,000 in its first month of fundraising.

 

Canada-Ukraine Foundation

 

An instructor helps a women make pottery at a 10-day rehabiliation camp in the Carpathian Mountains for war widows and mothers whose sons died in the east Ukraine combat zone financed by the Canada-Ukraine Foundation. in May.

An instructor helps a women make pottery at a 10-day rehabiliation camp in the Carpathian Mountains for war widows and mothers whose sons died in the east Ukraine combat zone financed by the Canada-Ukraine Foundation. in May. (Adriana Luhovy)

 

The group’s projects are too numerous to name. One notable project is the Operation Rainbow Surgical Medical Mission, inspired by Canadian surgeon Oleh Anonyshyn and coordinator Krystina Waler.

Using money raised at a fundraiser attended by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, famous hockey player Wayne Gretzky and Ottawa Senators hockey team owner Eugene Melnyk, the group has sent two specialized teams of Canadian surgeons, anesthetists and nurses to work with their Ukrainian colleagues and perform reconstructive surgery on EuroMaidan and war victims.

Following a needs assessment a team conducted in April 2014, 37 reconstructive procedures were performed on 30 patients costing $125,000 in November, according to Waler. Another team came back in May and performed 53 procedures on 29 patients for a total of 116 operating hours. They left behind $50,000 worth of implants and received $130,000 worth of equipment from Canadian medical equipment company Stryker.

Based on their last visit, 12 patients have signed up for the group’s next medical mission taking place in October, Waler told the Kyiv Post by phone.

Families are thankful for the medical missions conducted at the Central Military Hospital.

One patient whose jaw was sewed shut told the team that what he wanted the most was for women to find him attractive, according to Waler.

“There are huge physical things with which we could help…we help bring the jaw back to life and help him chew – but we also provide mental, emotional support,” she said.

 

New Generation / Help us Help the Children

 

Ukraine-registered New Generation international charitable fund,and its sister organization in Canada, Help Us Help the Children, was founded by Toronto native Ruslana Wrzesnewskyj in 1993.

Its original mission was to help orphaned children in Ukraine by providing and delivering humanitarian aid throughout orphanages across the country six times a year. In 1996, HUHTC started running summer camps to foster socialization through workshops, teaching transferable life skills and providing basic materialistic needs to the orphaned children.

They also run a six-year university scholarship program for orphaned children and currently have 47 students in the program.

After the EuroMaidan Revolution, their mandate changed to help victims stemming from the violence of the protests and of Russia’s war in the east, according to Anka Wrzesnewskyj, program coordinator for NG and Ruslana’s daughter.

They still hold summer camps for them, having hosted 310 kids last summer, including children affected by the war and kids displaced from the east and Crimea. Plans are to host 475 campers, including 350 children in the above-mentioned categories in August 2015.

Canada-Ukraine Foundation has been cooperating with HUHTC by providing funds for an ongoing rehabilitation retreat program for families whose spouses or children were killed or injured during the EuroMaidan Revolution and in the war in Donbas.

So far, seven 10-day sessions, at a cost of $25,000 each, have hosted 190 participants, or 84 families, including widows, children, mothers and fathers. They took place in the Carpathian Mountains. Another 30 families will head to Vorokhta in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast this fall.

They are given their own living space in small houses because many live in dormitories or houses with no running water. Workshops assume psychological and physical therapy through breathing exercises, nature walks, art therapy, and physical education for kids. They take private therapy sessions with Ukrainian psychologists and also have family circles sessions.

Some eastern families come with preconceived notions of western Ukrainians being rabid nationalists, Anka said. “The first three days are usually tense, then they relax after they see they’re all (with western Ukrainian families) under the same circumstances,” she said.

It’s an environment that gives them an aspect of grievance because where they come from, people have forgotten about their losses, she added.

A six-month follow-up program ensues, with volunteers conducting interviews with the families. Children aged 10 years or older then often get invited to attend the groups’ regular summer camp. Canada Ukraine Foundation president Victor Hetmanczuk also conducts feedback interviews.

The camp’s participants also keep in touch through a special Facebook page created on their behalf. The project is credited for saving the life of a mother in Volyn Oblast who lost a son in the combat zone. She was in the cellar of her apartment building getting ready to kill herself with pills and vodka when the group called to invite her to rehabilitation camp.

“She said it was a miracle because the cellar never had a cellphone connection so she was shocked to have received the call,” Anka said.

Ukrainian Catholic University

 

This private university in Lviv has many donors, including philanthropist Canadians like James Temerty, and many others who help raise funds and advise the educational institute. Canadian lawyer Daniel Bilak of the CMS Cameron McKenna law firm in Kyiv is one of them.

As a member of the university’s governing body in the senate, the Toronto native also sits on the board of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation. He is at the early stages of setting up a physical and occupational rehabilitation program at the university’s new campus.

Ukraine recently passed legislation to recognize physical rehabilitation as a profession, so he wants to establish a master’s program to train physical and occupational therapists. The center would service civilians and military personnel.

“It would be compliant with NATO standards and provide ambulatory care, outpatient wouldn’t be the primary care,” Bilak said.

Part of this plan is to change attitudes and how the government treats people requiring rehabilitation as “invalids and expects them to sit at home instead of turning them into functioning members of society to lead full and productive lives and make contributions to society,” he said.

This is where occupational therapy would benefit patients, but Ukrainian cities still have problems with ramps and wheelchair access, “the idea is start and change the word ‘invalid’ to something else in a different manner,” added Bilak, who has also advised the minister of justice, prime minister and Presidential Administration, and most recently the former governor of Donetsk Oblast, Serhiy Taruta.

 

Horizon Capital / Lenna Koszarny

 

London, Ontario native Lenna Koszarny wears many hats. She is the CEO of Kyiv-based private equity fund Horizon Capital, chairs the advisory council of UCC in Ukraine and sits on the board of UWC.

Through UWC, she helped 25 Canadian families adopt 50 Ukrainian soldiers by supplying them with non-lethal aid. The concept was to not look at the war “through facts and figures, but to have a soldier to sponsor and get to know them” Koszarny told the Kyiv Post.

They received individualized equipment and had it delivered to them where they were stationed, including one near the Donetsk Airport.

Horizon Capital helped raise money to purchase building materials to rebuild a school in the town of Mykolayivka in Donetsk Oblast through Novy Donbas, a Ukrainian group. It was the only school in town with an auditorium so it was used by all area schools and was considered, “the heart of the whole town,” she said.

Another company, KMCore, where Canadian Bohdan Kupych is a partner, helped upgrade the computer lab together with Iskander Energy, a Canadian-based firm. Separately, Kupych contributed to sending 3,000 tablet computers with mapping and communication capabilities to the front. He’s also developing drones.

Rebuilding the school helped mend wounds and show the community that all of Ukraine cares about Donbas, said Koszarny, whose father was born near Artemivsk in Donetsk Oblast.

Led by Lora Artugina, Novy Donbas brought volunteers from different regions to help rebuild the school and ended up “transforming hearts and minds in the process melting away all the barriers,” Kszarny said.

She also helped through the local chapter of UCC to ensure that non-lethal aid sent by the Canadian government got properly distributed and in the right hands. They partnered with volunteers to meet the aid, check documentation, oversee deployment and accompany the equipment to the front lines.

“It was to build credibility in terms of giving aid to Ukraine because people have heard different stories of things being not properly allocated or going missing,” she said.

Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].

 

Canada at a glance

 

 

Ukrainian-Canadian relations

 

 

Total area: 9,984,670 square kilometers

 

Population: 35.75 million

 

Population of Ukrainian descent: 1.2 million

 

Government type: a parliamentary democracy, a federation, and a Commonwealth realm

 

Head of state: Queen Elizabeth II; represented by Governor General David Lloyd Johnston

 

Head of government: Prime Minister Stephen Joseph Harper

 

GDP, PPP: $1.647 trillion (2015 estimate)

 

GDP per capita, PPP: $45,982 (2015 estimate)

 

Main sectors of the economy: mining, energy, agriculture, aerospace, banking, and services

 

Trade: $264.1 million (2014)

 

Exports from Canada to Ukraine: pharmaceuticals, mineral fuels and oils, fish and seafood, meat and machinery.

 

Exports from Ukraine to Canada: copper wares, mineral fuel, oil and refining products, ferrous metals and products, nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and fertilizers

 

Canadian investment in Ukraine: $72.4 million (cumulative as of April 2015)

 

Main Canadian investors: Black Iron (mining), Cub Energy, Serinus Energy, Shelton Petroleum (oil/gas) Toronto-Kiev (real estate), AG Growth International (agriculture), Promotion/KSV Consulting Inc. (outsourcing), Meest (logistics), Semex Alliance (agriculture)

 

Sources: Central Intelligence Agency, Ukrainian State Statistics Service, Embassy of Canada in Ukraine, Embassy of Ukraine in Canada, Global Finance Magazine