NOTE: Michele Rees of Ms Ree’s Vintage Beauty Parlour near Dairy Queen on Dundas East in Belleville has volunteered to act as an ongoing drop-off location for items being donated.
For some Belleville residents the war in Ukraine isn’t half a world away, it’s much closer to home.
Myroslava Symonenko is of Ukrainian decent and has family and friends who are living through the unthinkable.
She says she is touch with her mom and friends at least twice a day, but she wanted to do something more.
“Because I’m of Ukrainian origin and I have some family in Ukraine and it’s just devastating and unprecedented and it just still cannot fit in my skull what is happening there. So we just want to I guess, bring awareness and have some donations to the people in Ukraine who have to undergo through this, I don’t know, atrocity, through this terror right now what’s happening.”
On Saturday, there will be an event at Market Square to gather monetary donations and humanitarian aid items to donate to Ukraine says organizer Corinne Sykes.
“When we heard this company Meest, a parcel shipping company out of Ukraine that has offices in Toronto that was doing free shipments of parcels marked for humanitarian aid and shipping it for free, so when we heard that, that was kind of the spark of okay that’s what we can do here in Belleville.”
Items Symonenko has been told people need include hand warmers, sleeping bags, large containers (water jugs, gas cans), medical supplies also (tourniquets, bandages), medicine (pain killers, probiotics, anti-diarrhea, stress reducers, blood stopper, tourniquets, bandages) and protective gear (helmets, carrier vests, body armour, tactical gloves, warm camo clothing).
The event begins at 10 a.m. and will wrap up at 2 p.m. with a group photo and the singing of the Ukrainian national anthem.
They will also have stations for flag-making and note-writing for kids if they want to add a message of support to be included in the packages being sent over.
You can find their Facebook event page here.
Ukrainian national anthem lyrics:
In Latin alphabet, with translation:
Shche ne vmerla Ukrayiny ni slava, ni volya,
(Ukraine’s glory and will is not yet dead)
Shche nam, brattya molodiyi, usmikhnet’sya dolya.
(Fate will yet smile on us, young brothers)
Zginut’ nashi vorizhen’ki, yak rosa na sontsi,
(Our enemies will vanish, like dew in the sun)
Zapanuyem i mi, brattya, u svoyiy storontsi.
(We, my brothers, will rule in our own land)
Dushu y tilo mi polozhim za nashu svobodu
(We will lay down our soul and our body for our freedom)
I pokazhem, shcho mi, brattya, kozats’koho rodu.
(and we will show that we brothers are of Cossack ancestry)
In Ukrainian alphabet:
Ще не вмерла України ні слава, ні воля,
Ще нам, браття молодії, усміхнеться доля.
Згинуть наші воріженьки, як роса на сонці.
Запануєм і ми, браття, у своїй сторонці.
Душу й тіло ми положим за нашу свободу,
І покажем, що ми, браття, козацького роду.