As part of the Bridges of Trust initiative, the Danish municipality of Guldborgsund provided humanitarian aid to 9 municipalities in the Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi regions.

During meetings with their Ukrainian counterparts, representatives of the Danish municipality reaffirmed their support and readiness to assist in solving a number of problems caused by the war. One of the directions of this assistance is the support of internally displaced persons.

According to Mykola Siusko, Head of the Regional Office of U-LEAD in the Zakarpattia region, who was in charge of the assistance coordination, the municipalities partnering with the Danish municipality received humanitarian aid in the form of food packages.

“In wartime, the cooperation of Ukrainian municipalities with the municipality of Guldborgsund is especially relevant, because the best practices and expertise of our Danish counterparts are important for our European integration and acquisition of EU membership. We are also glad that this cooperation has taken new forms, including humanitarian aid to Ukrainian municipalities. This is another essential area of ​​support and assistance for them in accepting internally displaced persons, since each partner municipality has a large number of IDPs and provides them with everything they need,” said Mykola Siusko.

During this and last week, municipalities received humanitarian aid, which included food packages with canned goods, pasta, rice, cereals, chickpeas, etc. In total, 6.7 tons of long shelf-life foods worth 13,500 EURO were provided. The funds were allocated under the Cooperation Agreement between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and the municipality of Guldborgsund. The Danish non-governmental association Sydhavsøerne Hjælper Ukraine (Lolland-Falster Support Ukraine) helped Guldborgsund with food storage. The aid was transported to Ukraine with the support of the U-LEAD team.

Such assistance is essential for municipalities, as they have set up temporary shelters for internally displaced persons who need to be additionally provided with food and other basic necessities.

The Horinchovo Village Council, Zakarpattia region, is one of the partner municipalities of Guldborgsund and received humanitarian aid from them. The municipality plans to provide assistance to socially vulnerable groups of people and IDPs.

“We will direct the aid to internally displaced persons who live in municipal facilities of our municipality. We have already launched this process, and people have started receiving food packages. This assistance will also be partially directed to socially vulnerable groups of people, in particular to elderly people who live alone and need our support. Such help from our international partners is very important for our municipality and its residents. In the future, we will determine other directions for the development of our further cooperation with our Danish colleagues,” said Ivan Pash, Head of the Department of Education, Youth, Sports, Culture and Tourism of the Horinchovo Village Council.

The representatives of Guldborgsund recently shared their experience of the participatory approach in municipal planning with Ukrainian municipalities at a two-day workshop. Ukrainian municipal officials, in addition to learning from their Danish counterparts, also shared their best practices in the use of citizen engagement tools. With the support of U-LEAD with Europe, the cooperation with the Danish municipality of Guldborgsund is being developed by the Horinchovo, Svaliava, Yasinia municipalities (Zakarpattia region), Halych, Horodenka, Dolyna municipalities (Ivano-Frankivsk region) and Hlyboka, Novoselytsia, Khotyn municipalities (Chernivtsi region).