Meeting our partners is always a pleasure, especially when the relationship develops into a friendship over time. During his recent visit to Ukraine, Charles Tiné, co-founder of our association, had the opportunity to visit the facilities of the Ukrainian NGO Volunteering and Help Center (vdc.in.ua) in Lviv, with Iryna Orshak, VHC's fundraising manager.

Founded in April 2022, VHC is one of the largest Ukrainian NGOs to have been set up since the start of the large-scale invasion. The figures testify to their impact: 2,000 volunteers, over 1,300 lorries of humanitarian aid deployed in 24 regions of Ukraine, 2 hubs (in Ukraine and Poland) and 8 local regional centres (Lviv, Kyiv, Poltava, Dnipro, Odesa, Kharkiv, Kherson and Kostiantynivka).

Although donations of materials and products regularly arrive from all over the world, from the USA to Japan and many European countries, financial donations are increasingly limited, and financing such an organisation is expensive. To cover the fixed costs (warehouse, non-volunteer staff, etc.), VHC had the bright idea of setting up a workshop to make toilet paper, napkins and kitchen towels. The products are sold in many Ukrainian supermarkets, and have met with great success, both because of their very competitive price and because of the support that the local population gives to humanitarian actions through these products.

Our current collaboration covers a number of projects, including our children's library programme, as well as logistics, where our mutual exchanges are significant. Two examples: VHC assists us with convoys of computers from Lviv to Kharkiv, while we make our van available to them to meet local logistical needs in Lviv.

A number of joint projects are currently under discussion, and we look forward to revealing more about them soon.