Preservation of cultural heritage: philanthropists launch new grant competition

The MHP-Community Charitable Foundation, together with the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, has launched a grant competition "Culture in the Focus of Communities," UNN reports.

Details

The competition was presented in late January in Kyiv during a joint press meeting of the MHP-Hromada Charitable Foundation and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, dedicated to the results of support for cultural initiatives in 2024 and plans for 2025

The aim of the competition is to support local initiatives aimed at preserving and developing Ukrainian cultural heritage. As part of the project, the participants will be able to receive from UAH 500 thousand to UAH 1 million to implement their cultural projects. Both legal entities and individuals can apply. Applications are accepted until February 24, 2025.

This year, the UCF has added another priority: partnership for community development. It is within this area that we, together with MHP-Community, have launched a new competition. As part of the competition, participants can create an art object, a piece of folk art, a performance, record an audio single or digitize a cultural heritage monument 

The importance of cultural identity and the need to support cultural initiatives is emphasized by Oleksandr Pakholyuk, Director of the MHP-Community Charitable Foundation.

For 10 years, the MHP-Community Charitable Foundation has been developing communities. But after the full-scale invasion, we realized that culture is something that cannot be postponed. Therefore, we began to support community initiatives in this area, which forms our national identity, even more actively 

In total, since the beginning of the full-scale war, the foundation has allocated more than UAH 80 million to support cultural projects. In 2023 alone, five cultural centers were restored and supported, including the museum-estate of Vyacheslav Chornovil, composer Mykola Leontovych, writers Vasyl Symonenko and Vasyl Stus, and the Museum of Trypillian Culture.

And last year, the Foundation significantly expanded its support for cultural initiatives, in particular, it joined the promotion of Ukraine abroad through the popularization of kobzarism and its recognition as an intangible heritage of the world, the Will to Win project.

Important initiatives continued at the national level, including the national Cinema for Victory tour, Kozak System performances in military hospitals, and the restoration of a 100-year-old windmill in Kherson region.

Also in 2024, the Foundation supported local projects, including the restoration of cultural heritage sites that are part of the tourist routes of Shevchenko's homeland in the Taras Shevchenko National Reserve in Cherkasy region.

One of the successful examples of sustainable support for cultural institutions in communities is the project "SPADOK. Clothing of Myronivshchyna" project, implemented by the Myroniv Museum of Local Lore in cooperation with the MHP-Community Foundation. As part of this project, museum workers recreated and digitized the traditional clothing of the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Inna Savsiuk, director of the Myronivka Museum of Local Lore, said the project consisted of three stages. At the beginning, the museum workers collected and researched traditional clothing in museums, private collections, and villages in the community. Next, they digitized the collected collections and recreated four women's and two men's sets of traditional clothing.

Reviving and popularizing Ukrainian culture is an important step in strengthening national identity. Cooperation between business, government agencies and NGOs can be a driving force for positive changes in the preservation of cultural heritage.

Help

"MHP for Communities is a Ukrainian charitable foundation that was launched in 2015. Its main mission is the comprehensive development of communities.

The geography of the Foundation's activities includes 13 regions of Ukraine: more than 700 towns and villages. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Foundation has been systematically supporting people in the war zone, Ukrainian defenders and rescuers, communities, hospitals and maternity homes, charitable institutions that care for orphans and the elderly, as well as people who have lost their homes and livelihoods due to the war.