Dear members, friends and supporters of the Australian-Ukrainian community, this week we have quite a bit to report on:
🎖️🪖 Received a medal, recognising military support
Our community’s efforts to provide non-lethal military aid to our brave defenders on the frontline have been recognised in Ukraine.
The Commander of the 5th Separate Heavy Mechanised Brigade issued a medal and a certificate of thanks for the support. Grateful for the recognition of our community’s work in providing life-saving equipment to Ukraine, but most importantly we are grateful for the daily service of our brave defenders who stand on the frontline of freedom and protect us all! 🙏🏻
👩🏻💻 AFUO Board meeting – this week’s meeting was all about corporate governance and compliance. Thank you to Dr Derek Lundberg for running the training & induction course. The Board resolved to form a Governance sub-committee, an expression of interest form will be published soon – stay tuned!
🇦🇺 Defend Ukraine Appeal – delivered a reconnaissance drone to the 4th Mechanised Battalion of the Separate Presidential Brigade named after Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. This request came from our QLD community member Sergiy B.
The drone was generously sponsored by Australian supporter Mark Kirikud who asked our dear artist Tetiana Koldunenko to draw a picture of Oscar Jenkins, to raise awareness about the Australian prisoner of war. Grateful to Ivan Rymovskyy, Nicholas Saczko and Andrii Popyk for the logistics support 🤝🏻
📊 With the Federal election coming up in Australia, the AFUO launched a “Ukraine Policy Survey” for political candidates and parties. The results will be presented as a “Ukraine Policy Scorecard” showing where candidates and parties stand on Ukraine.
🏘️ Promoting small business – facilitated meeting with Caroline Gorman, philanthropist and supporter of Ukraine with macaroon queen Maryna Lialka. Exploring investment opportunities and how we can best scale our community’s businesses.
🤝🏻 Meeting with ASX-listed defence company DroneShield – introduced our defender & drone pilot Nazar “Kapa” to Chairman Peter James and CEO Oleg Vornik. Grateful to John McMurtrie for the introduction! We are working on an exciting project in the drone & electronic warfare space – stay tuned!
📑 Regular AFUO work – once again there were many regular planning and strategic calls this week. We have also been busy getting our accounts in order with lots of receipts, account balancing and financial planning. A massive amount of work done by our hardworking finance gurus – thank you Paul Herczaniwski, Andrew Kohut and Jarema Polatajko.
💙💛 Ukraine Crisis Appeal – container #4 was packed this week and is ready to go! Thank you to our Humanitarian Aid Coordinator Teresa Lachowicz and all our amazing volunteers!
🌏 UWC meeting – attended a Ukrainian World Congress meeting hosted by VP Nataliya Poshyvaylo-Towler, with representatives from our communities in South and Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Turkey, and Lebanon. Thank you to Kate Turska, Co-chair of the Ukrainian Association of New Zealand, for an inspiring workshop on effective advocacy practices.
