Voice of Ukraine

From Maia Mikhaluk in Kyiv: 273rd night of ruzzian invasion.

We are not surviving, we are dreaming! Help us put dreams into plans!

Today we had 7th massive missile strike on critical infrastructure all around Ukraine. Many cities in Ukraine are without light and water right now, some are without heat. The temperatures outside are below zero.

Miraculously our building has power right now, though everything around is in darkness on both sides of the building! Maybe the power is on so I could right this post! 🙂 I am trying to catch up on emails and messages. It’s becoming a challenge with limited hours of power.

You might wonder what thoughts and dreams might be nestling in the minds and hearts of Ukrainians who are facing 120 days of cold winter weather ahead while terrorist attacks on our infrastructure continue making possible survival scenarios more and more complicated. Of course, we are making every possible preparation for the next 120 days. But we are also thinking about the future beyond that.

One of the ideas that was planted by a friend a while ago was about community farming. We can keep helping people survive by providing some food (like food packages and soup kitchens), but it would be much better to give a chance for people to grow food and to possibly create some new jobs.

I have seen community farming at work in the States and a friend in Canada just told me it’s also a functional model in Canada. We have been reluctant to share the idea with others because we have no practical plan how it would work in Ukraine but maybe among our FB friends there are people who can help us develop a plan for a vision that we have.

Our personal experience with farming is very limited – we have been volunteers on Sasha’s flower farm the first year when she started in 2021, but this year everything was pretty much on hold because of the war. We don’t want to bite more than we can chew, but we also want to at least explore the idea of community farming for our churches and our communities. If you can help us with ideas or know someone who can, please, let us know.

Ruzzians can’t bomb us into submission, they can’t even bomb us into pure survival mode. We want to keep dreaming, planning for the future and helping our people to thrive! When ruzzians destroy there is an urge to not only fight but to create, to build!