(This is part of the message sent out on May 18 to the PolishOrigins newsletter subscribers as continuation of the introductory message describing our Foundation)
Our main mission for the History, Healing, and Hope tour and the Foundation is to help the young generation of Ukrainians and Poles to get to know and understand each other better, to learn about the common history, including its difficult periods, and to build together for the future. Societies in many countries, continents, and parts of the world are becoming increasingly polarized. We hope that, at least in this small area of our competence (history, genealogy, tour organization), we can influence some young people and give them a chance to understand history and each other better.
Not to divide and destroy, but to connect and create.
THANK YOU to all of you who donated to the tour. Some of you have been very generous and we have raised 41% of the amount needed to make this tour happen in the planned itinerary and for the planned (15) number of participants.
WE STILL HOPE TO RAISE THE REMAINING AMOUNT WITHIN THE NEXT 3 WEEKS TO MAKE THIS TRIP A REALITY.
As I mentioned to you in the previous email, our partner organization from Zhytomyr (the Zhytomyr Community Foundation http://www.fondgromady.org.ua/en/) announced the tour and collected applications for the tour from the youth.
One of the conditions to apply was that the teenagers should describe themselves in the form of a written essay or a short video. From the more than 40 applications, after getting formal permission from the authors and their parents, we published the stories of some of them on the Foundation’s blog: https://puorigins.org/blog/ .
You can see for yourself how passionate, interested in different fields, full of hope and dreams these young people are. But you can also sense a lot of uncertainty about their future and the anxiety that comes from living in places where you never know if a bomb will hit your house or if your father will return from the war.
Below are links to the stories (essays and videos) of some of the tour applicants:
Polina: https://puorigins.org/polina/
Danill: https://puorigins.org/daniil/
Tetiana: https://puorigins.org/tetiana/
Kate: https://puorigins.org/kate/
Dmytro: https://puorigins.org/dmytro/
Alina: https://puorigins.org/alina/
Yulia: https://puorigins.org/yulia/
Yehor: https://puorigins.org/yehor/
Viktoria: https://puorigins.org/viktoria/
Aleksandra: https://puorigins.org/aleksandra/
Maria: https://puorigins.org/maria/
Lia: https://puorigins.org/lia/
If you would like to make a donation to help make this tour possible, please do so here: https://puorigins.org/donate/ . If you would like to support a specific child, please specify the name of the child during the donation process.
If you cannot or do not want to donate right now, but you know people or organizations who might be willing to contribute to the cause PLEASE SHARE THIS MESSAGE. (Some of you wrote to me after the first message that they asked their family and friends to donate to the Tour for their birthdays and Fathers/Mothers day).
We only have 3 weeks left to secure funding.
We also invite you to the Foundation’s FB page https://www.facebook.com/puorigins/ created and managed by the Foundation Council member Cynthia McDonald and her friend Sheryl.
Best wishes from Poland,
Zenon Znamirowski
Chairman of the Polish-Ukrainian Origins Foundation
P.S. You ask if there will be a report after the tour. YES! One of the mandatory requirements for the teens to participate is that they will share their experiences in the form of presentations in their schools (offline). We also plan to collect a lot of materials during the trip and share them with you (online). Just follow the Foundation’s website: https://puorigins.org/, subscribe to the Foundation’s newsletter, and follow us on FB: https://www.facebook.com/puorigins/ .