Food For Thought: A Dinner For Ukraine

Support Ukraine’s Fight For Independence

We are partnering with Open Hand Pasta & Provisions to offer a delivered meal to your doorstep that celebrates Ukraine’s culinary heritage and raises desperately needed funds. John Wood and his team at Open Hand have researched a menu and will source the ingredients from local organic and sustainable farms and suppliers, with delivery throughout the DMV. We have chosen to donate the proceeds to Razom – an exceptional corps of volunteers that works closely with groups of Ukrainian citizens and the defense forces inside Ukraine.  A country’s cuisine is an important part of its citizens identity, and to that end  we want you to enjoy a sampling of Ukraine’s cuisine and help this brave, brave country in its hour of need. Our  images for this special post are from a collaborative of Ukrainian artists and are available for sharing through www.supportukraine-pic.com. A commemorative menu will be included with your delivery. Each is a generous meal for one recipient, and in my experience Open Hand’s single portions practically feed two. The cost of this delivered Ukrainian menu is $80.00 per person, with 50%  going to Razom and the rest covering ingredients, prep, and delivery. Click here to order your meal, and share this link with your friends. 

Open Hand Menu to be delivered April 21, 2022 to residents in the DMV

Razom=Together

This is a mighty group that you may not have read about. It was founded in 2014 as a result of the bloody and chaotic but ultimately successsful Maidan protests in Ukraine. In fact, one of Razom’s earliest projects was to deliver clothing, food, and protective gear to the protesters in the Maidan throughout the winter of 2014. Its 80-page legal report on the legal and human rights issues from the illegal annexation of Crimea is on numerous top law school reading lists.  In order to help families in Ukraine who have lost fathers in the face of the ongoing Donbas War, this group helps fund Lviv Education Foundation’s Big Brother program, which offers mentorship to kids whose families have been affected by the war in eastern Ukraine. Razom has initiated numerous IT symposiums and internships which help a very ambitious generation of Ukrainian citizens advance in the global tech sector. In 2017 their Co-Pilot Project funded medical equipment and a team of  US neurosurgeons  to Ukraine, where they conducted 40 major brain and spine operations across the country. Obviously now Razom is focused on the extremely difficult task of delivering medical and technical supplies to areas where the fight for independence is most critical.  This is where your donation for the Open Hand Ukrainian Dinner will help. Below is a brief description of how complex the delivery of medical and tech supplies is inside Ukraine.

Aid is packed into small vehicles allowing volunteer drivers to maneuver more nimbly. Coordination with civilian defense corps (the ultimate volunteer network in Ukraine today) via satellite phones, which offer the most reliable form of communication, strengthen our logistics chain on the ground in Ukraine. There’s also a verbal verification system in place that ensures volunteers know they’re putting the delivery in safe hands. When available, small civilian drones are another important tool for our volunteers to scope out safe passage routes and share valuable information in real time. These tech-enabled emergency response supplies have made a big impact on our volunteers’ ability to work effectively in executing the logistics chain in Ukraine. We are enormously grateful for the brave and trusted group of people who carry out this work.  

— Razom Fact Sheet on their logistics program for delivering aid in Ukraine.

Holodomor

This is not the first or even the second time that Ukraine has suffered horrific devastation at Russian hands. Most of us are familiar with the illegal annexation of Crimea, which had complicit help from the Russian puppet regime in 2014. And it is still considered part of Ukraine internationally. But the one that many of us don’t know about is the genocide of around  seven to eleven million Ukrainians between 1928 and 1933. Ukraine was a “socialist republic” in name only, as its government was controlled by the Kremlin. The collectivization of independent farms was initiated by the Russian government in 1928 under Stalin, who, with his cronies, dreamed up infamous Five Year Plans to reorganize agriculture and industries across the USSR.  Heavy industries that involved the production and accumulation of coal, steel, iron and oil were prioritized. Railways were built, steel mills erected and new sources for coal and oil were developed at great cost to the surrounding communities. As the population of industrial workers became enormous (many of them farmers who were forced off their land to work in these new industries) and had to be fed, Stalin appropriated by force farmlands where the remaining farming population would have to turn over most of their harvest to Stalin’s government, leaving them with almost nothing to eat. Thousands of protests occurred, many in the rich agricultural areas of the Ukraine. Thousands were imprisoned in gulags, dispossessed of their farms and and millions were exterminated by starvation. In the Ukraine, Stalin’s revenge was particularly brutal. Desperate families were forced to dig up roots with their bare hands to try to feed themselves. 

There is a statue, “Bitter Memory of Childhood,” in a memorial park in Kyiv to Holodomor, which means Great Famine or Terror Famine,  and there is also a Holodomor Memorial in Washington DC. with a devastating casting of receding fields of wheat. Our cities are linked by this bitter memory, and by the desire to prevent its reawakening.