As part of their contacts in Ukraine since the start of the war, many NGOs, including us, have had to meet local authority managers. 

These contacts have sometimes led to the creation of partnership programmes between French and Ukrainian local authorities. This is how The Small Project Team coordinated a partnership between the town of Valky, some thirty kilometres west of Kharkiv, and an alliance of 7 villages on the outskirts of Toulouse, grouped around the municipality of Gagnac-sur-Garonne.

Valky, which suffered destruction at the start of the war, was then used as a rear base to receive more than 20,000 internally displaced persons, mainly from the east of the country, a constant challenge for this town, which normally has a population of 10,000.

An initial endowment from Gagnac, to send 15 generators in the depths of winter, got the ball rolling, followed by a vote by the municipalities in the alliance* to add €0.50 to local taxes for the 30,000 inhabitants of these municipalities. The project made possible by this grant is the reconstruction of the gymnasium at the Valky school complex. With a budget of around €15,000, the work has now begun, and we'll be happy to report on it in a future article.

This inter-municipal solidarity is a way of creating concrete, solid bridges and putting faces to the beneficiaries of the fund-raising actions. We believe that this is an effective and sustainable solution to aid the reconstruction of Ukraine, and we are available to help other French communes to build this type of solidarity project.

The next step for this Alliance for Valky is to raise funds from local businesses to create a reception centre for around a hundred displaced people, with a target of raising €105,000 by the end of the year. To be continued...

*The Alliance for Valky municipalities are Gagnac sur Garonne, Fonbeauzard, Fenouillet, Gratentour, Lespinasse, St Alban and Seilh.