The UNBROKEN Emergency Summit held in October 2023 attracted some leading minds from the association, charity, and consulting sectors as Lviv shared insights to the medical needs of the country. A visit to the UNBROKEN Rehabilitation Centre included to the facility’s psychological rehabilitation unit where the extent of the trauma was shared by its leading psychologist, Dr. Oleh Berezyuk. The use of the UNBROKEN Art Centre, to encourage expression by those so traumatised to even speak, nevertheless spoke volumes.
Even this brave group of attendees who met with patients and clinicians to assimilate the support required were visibly moved to tears by the dark art on display.
Kai Troll, President of ASSOCIATIONWORLD, represented his community of over 5,000 associations while at the Summit. Troll, a veteran of the philanthropic sector having been instrumental in the formation and administration of the Kennedy Shriver Foundation, concluded that while the association and charity sectors have a significant role to play in knowledge sharing, in developing closer collaboration with their Ukrainian members who will likely lead the recovery in the sectors they represent, when it comes to infrastructure for expanding the UNBROKEN Centre, for example – as for other critical infrastructure – these projects need seriously big funding which can only come from institutions such as the World Bank and the EU.
Pavlyuk: “Every meeting we have here is for legacy, for saving lives, for humanity”
Associations informed through ASSOCIATIONWORLD will undoubtedly have a significant role to play in the recovery and rehabilitation of the country. But the scale of the challenges will need a structured approach, not dissimilar to that of the Marshall Plan post WWII when the Allies funded the reconstruction of Germany. Whether the triangulated cross-fire of activities elsewhere – in the Middle East and potentially the South China Sea – in the lead up to the Presidential election in November reveal such an appetite for global leadership from the US, or not, might put the emphasis for Ukraine’s reconstruction firmly into the EU court. Certainly with the Israel Hamas distraction already casting the Ukrainian war into a seemingly forgotten backwater of global politics, it seems unlikely that the Economic Recovery Act of 1948 under President Truman could ever emerge under a Trump administration.
Associations, charities, NGOs, and Foundations must endeavour to ensure that such conditions are not allowed to shape policy, in Europe at least, and to share the same resolve and unbroken spirit of the Director of Lviv Conventions at the Bureau of European Integration, Olena Pavlyuk, expressed in this report.
She certainly has an ally in Troll on her country’s journey.
Further reading:
International Rehabilitation Forum 2023 is a Game Changer for Lviv
