Canada Ukraine Agrarian Development

My friend and colleague, Berny, arrives in Kyiv on Saturday. He and I are members of a small loose knit Saskatchewan-based NGO called Canada Ukraine Agrarian Development (CUAD).

CUAD’s goals are

1. To support, foster, promote and develop patterns of sustainable agricultural production in Ukraine.
2. To jointly pursue the development of appropriate structures for agricultural management and marketing
3. To pursue the achievement of empowerment with people involved in the ownership and operation of their farms
4. To mutually enhance the quality of farm operations in Ukraine
5. To encourage farmer leadership
6. To foster hope and enhance the lives of Ukrainian people through social development.

Berny is coming to follow up on a previous project, sound out a number of people for ideas and needs for new projects and introduce me as a CUAD member living in Ukraine to all his contacts. Our hope is that I can prove to be a useful contact for Canadians and Ukrainians in needs assessment, development and implementation of new projects. We have 10 days of meetings beginning in Kyiv, then in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

Zaporizhzhia is where the Mennonites settled in Russia at the invitation of Empress Catherine in about 1770 and from whence a large number emigrated to Canada beginning in about 1870, with the last major group, including Berny’s parents in 1924. There have been and still are a number of projects in Zaporizhzhia sponsored by people with Mennonite roots. CUAD is not limited to working in only one oblast but began in Zaporizhzhia as that was where their contacts were.