Looking for a way to help the people suffering on a daily basis in war-torn Ukraine?
The Baltimore-Odesa Sister City Committee and the Mission to Ukraine organization recently announced the creation of the Baltimore-Ukraine Sister City Challenge, a fundraising campaign to bring direct aid to Baltimore’s sister city, Odesa, and other regions of Ukraine in need of medical supplies, medicine and other life-saving equipment.
The campaign will be held from May 18-25.
In recent weeks, the Baltimore-Odesa Sister City Committee facilitated virtual meetings between Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott and Gennadiy Trukhanov, the mayor of Odesa. The committee also orchestrated a meeting between Trukhanov and Gov. Larry Hogan.
On May 10, the committee joined Hogan to announce an aid package for Odesa from Maryland that included ICU ventilators, bandages, body armor and wound care supplies.
Founded in 1974, the Baltimore-Odesa Sister City Committee is part of Baltimore Sister Cities Inc., a program established in the early 1970s by then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer. A nonprofit volunteer organization, Baltimore Sister Cities aims to promote mutual economic development, educational, cultural, health/environmental and other cooperation and exchanges between Baltimore and its sister cities around the world.
The chair of the Baltimore-Odesa Sister City Committee is Karina Mandell, a native of the Ukrainian city of Dnipro who immigrated to the United States in 1996. The Baltimore resident attended the Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School and served as president of the Hillel chapter at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
An Odesa native who now lives in Washington, D.C., Slava Kuperstein serves as the secretary of the Baltimore-Odesa Sister City Committee. He and his family relocated to Pikesville from Ukraine in 1989.
Mission to Ukraine is a grassroots organization consisting of New York resident Mark Kreynovich and Dillon Carroll, who left their jobs in the United States to help distribute aid to refugees at the Ukrainian-Polish border. Kreynovich is a native of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv who grew up in Baltimore, graduated from Towson High School and attended Cornell University. He is involved with Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, and Carroll was his roommate during their freshman year at Cornell.
Last month, Mission to Ukraine partnered with the Cincinnati-Kharkiv Sister City Partnership to raise $250,000 in 72 hours for aid to Kharkiv. Funds helped purchase generators for three villages in the region, and Mission to Ukraine is using proceeds to purchase vital, on-the-ground needs such as medicine, medical supplies and protective gear for medics.
For information about the Baltimore-Odesa Sister City Committee, click here.
For information about Mission to Ukraine, visit linktr.ee/missiontoukraine.
A committed philanthropist and community leader, Russel was president of R&H Motors.
The mother of four was a native of Winchester, Virginia, who spent most of her life in Northwest Baltimore.
The remaining 6,000 members of the community are expected to immigrate by 2030.
The Columbia resident worked on the Gemini and Apollo space missions.