Culture is what shapes Ukrainians as a nation: MHP-Community talks about helping communities preserve cultural values

The projects of the charitable foundation MHP for Community and the international company MHP won the National Competition Charitable Ukraine-2023. In total, more than 1600 applications were submitted from all over Ukraine. There were 26 nominations in total. Two of them were won by the project to restore 5 museums, which was implemented last year by the MHP for the Community charitable foundation (nomination "Charity in Culture and Arts") and the MHP Poruch program to support military and veterans (nomination "Big Business Charity"). Oleksandr Pakholyuk, director of the MHP-Hromada Charitable Foundation, spoke in more detail about the project to restore 5 museums and the importance of supporting cultural projects in times of war, UNN reports with reference to the project "Expert Opinion.

Details

Pakholyuk clarified that the project to restore 5 museums was launched last year.

"Culture is what distinguishes us from any other nationality or country. We know that the war today is about our cultural values, which, as we see, are constantly being destroyed. The enemy is doing this to show the world that we have no culture or identity," Pakholyuk emphasized.

As part of the project, philanthropists restored 5 museums in Vinnytsia and Cherkasy regions.

"Unfortunately, culture in the country is still financed on a residual basis. Then who, if not us, should support culture so that it can develop and be passed down from generation to generation. That's why this project was launched," said the director of MHP-Hromada.

Pakholyuk also explained how MHP-Community selects museums for restoration.

"Our principle is not to give a fish, but to give a fishing rod. There are a lot of museums in Ukraine. For us, the interest of people themselves in the development of the museum is important. That's why we give them an impetus, we highlight them in the media, we help them to do, for example, reconstruction, to do what they consider necessary. Something that can be used to popularize and develop the museum in the future," he added.

Separately, Pakholyuk spoke about an important project for MHP-Hromada to restore a library in a de-occupied village in the Kyiv region. We are talking about Rudnytske. In 2022, the village was occupied by the Russian military. They burned down the local school, shelled a number of other infrastructure facilities, and destroyed and damaged private homes of local residents. The premises of the local club, which housed the library, were also damaged. The library itself had its doors smashed in and books with Ukrainian symbols trampled on. Last year, thanks to benefactors, the club managed to create a creative space for children from Rudnytske.

The next step was to restore the library. The library was restored within the framework of the grant competition "Strengthening public participation in early recovery processes in the liberated territories", administered by ISAR "UNITED" with the support of the Partnership for a Strong Ukraine Foundation, funded by partner countries in cooperation with the MHP-Community Foundation. The premises were completely renovated (walls, ceiling, floor), new furniture and some books were purchased.

"When the occupation troops withdrew, we helped with the restoration of some buildings. And we realized that the occupiers lived in the school. The school is no longer subject to restoration. Accordingly, there was a request from the community to create a space where they could still receive some educational services and develop.

"We do not want our children to make extra efforts to access Ukrainian culture. By empowering communities, we make them self-recharging. This is our goal," comments Pakholyuk.