By Dzvinka Kachur
In 2016, the Ukrainian school in Cape Town, South Africa, launched classes for children, even before the Ukrainian Association of South Africa (UAZA) was officially registered in May 2017. Since 2019, UAZA has organized annual family summer camps to bring children and their families together.
This year, thanks to Postcards to the Front Canada, children and family members attending the Ukrainian camp joined the initiative of writing postcards to the frontline. There is hardly a Ukrainian family without relatives serving on the frontline. As a result, these postcards were deeply personal, as many of them mentioned “My sister is on the frontline, maybe next to you…” or, “My brother is fighting near Pokrovsk…”. These messages were very healing to the writers themselves as they became a little bridge to sisters and brothers so dear to our hearts.
Pan Mykola, who is 79 years old and was born in a Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Germany after his Ukrainian parents became refugees as a result of WWII, wrote in perfect Ukrainian and quoted the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. He highlighted that although he has never lived in Ukraine, he is Ukrainian and continues to celebrate and preserve Ukrainian culture.
The most emotional messages, however, came from the children.
One boy wrote about how much he misses fishing in Ukraine and how much he would love to go fishing there again with his grandfather.
We believe that so many of our Defenders would love to be fishing in their favourite places with grandfathers or grandsons.
Thus, we hope that these simple messages from sunny and warm South Africa, on postcards featuring images of penguins and African wildlife, will convey at least a small part of the gratitude that the Ukrainian community in South Africa feels towards the Defenders who, despite all the challenges of weather and new drone warfare, continue to protect us.
We also hope that these postcards will bring a smile to the faces of our Defenders.
Need ideas about what to write on your cards? Check our Tips page, and our Ukrainian phrases page. Maybe you want to organize a group of family, friends, your book club or church group, or others to write postcards Defenders? Check our website for tips, How to Run a Postcard-Writing Workshop.
Share our website – postcardstothefrontcanada.com
Your cards do make a difference!
as Danylo tells us from the front lines –
Nothing warms the soldiers’ heart as a handwritten letter.
Postcards to the Front (Canada / Канада) 
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