When part of the world was actively preparing for Christmas, and the other part was actively finalizing all possible things and looking forward to New Year night, we were having our fundraising training. Small group of volunteers met in Svyatogorsk on December 14th to have five intensive days of learning program. Our trainer Oleg Grishin from Youth Employment Center (Donetsk) has prepared extensive program, covering such issues as strategic planning, branding and PR, different types of donors and how to work with them, differences and similarities of fundraising from governmental and business at local level, and international foundations; reporting and communication with donors. Details...

This year some volunteers of SVIT have joined the traditional for ECC “Bakhmat” ethno-cultural trip to a village of Zvanivka, located in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine. The special thing about this village is, that half of its residents are ‘native’ for Donetsk region, and half of them are coming from somewhere what is Poland now. After 2nd World War, when USSR and Poland were fixing countries’ territories, some Ukrainian land was given to Poland and the other way around – of course without people. They were moved elsewhere, as complete villages. In Zvanivka ‘native’ and ‘western’ Ukrainians peacefully coexist already for about 50 years. Details...