⚽🦿 The 8th trip to Ukraine by our co-founder Charles Tiné since the start of the large-scale invasion took place in the wake of the European Amputee Football Championship, which he spent with the Ukrainian national team. The trip was mainly devoted to our project to support the development of amputee football in Ukraine.

On his return to Kyiv, he had fruitful discussions with Serhiy Vladyko, a member of the Ukrainian Football Association's executive committee, on the future development of the sport.

With over 50,000 amputees in the country, the needs are enormous and it is vital to create clubs throughout the country to give them the opportunity to discover this sport and train close to home. This sport fits in perfectly with an overall social programme to rehabilitate physical and psychological health of civilians and veterans who were victims of the Russian invasion.

At present, only three clubs are in operation. The oldest and most advanced is Pokrova, founded in Lviv in 2023, which now competes in the Polish Ampfoot league, one of the top leagues in Europe. 

Shakhtar Donetsk, a professional football club, created its ampfootball team a few months ago. Such an initiative by a team of this importance is a very important step in raising the profile of the sport in Ukraine. Shakhtar Donetsk has ambitious plans to help create other teams beyond its Kyiv base.

The most recent team was founded in Cherkasy, by the municipal club Dnipro Cherkasy. We had the chance to visit their facilities, meet the mayor of Cherkasy, Anatoliy Bondarenko, and the club's general manager, Yuri Goncharov, and watch the team train. There is no doubt that it will become a major club in this sport in Ukraine.

The challenge now is to go well beyond these first three clubs and offer amputees the opportunity and chance to play close to home.

Our UAmpfoot programme (https://thesmallprojects.org/ampfoot) acts as an intermediary between clubs seeking funding to set up an amputee football team and donors.

As an intermediary organisation acting as a trusted third party, we analyse the requests we receive from clubs to ensure that they are serious and ethical.

At the same time, we collect the funds and distribute them to the clubs after a precise analysis of needs, based on a step-by-step allocation. This ensures that the funds are sent to the right people, for the right expenditure, at the right time.