A team of Gators is preparing to design prosthetic limbs and build bomb shelters for civilians more than 5,000 miles away. After a year of campaigning for a sister-city agreement between Gainesville and Nizhyn, Ukraine, students with UF’s Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative saw their efforts come to fruition.
Mayor Harvey Ward signed a memorandum uniting the cities Oct. 31 in a partnership to promote international understanding and facilitate cultural exchange.
Mikhail Mikhaylov, the 22-year-old president of the Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative, hopes it will enable budding biomedical engineers and diplomats to aid a country embroiled in an existential conflict.
“I think there's an urge to highlight the importance of healing within communities that are in need right now,” he said.
As the third anniversary of the war draws near, Ukraine has lost 80,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians, with no clear end in sight. And aid from its allies is in jeopardy.
President-elect Donald Trump, who has mused about ending the war before he takes office, plans to curtail funds to the country as Russia advances into its eastern region.
That’s why Mikhaylov, a UF political science and international relations senior, said projects on the municipal level are paramount.
“We weren't expecting any national government money in the first place, so our understanding of our work does not alter in any way,” he said. “We're kind of taking international politics into our own hands in this capacity.”
Twenty-year-old UF political science junior Elizabeth Kemp, secretary of the Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative, said threats to federal aid for Ukraine haven’t taken her eyes off the ball. If anything, they’ve boosted her resolve.
Kemp, who interned with the U.S. Department of State, said she wasn’t sure she wanted to pursue a career in diplomacy. She said seeing the sister-city project become reality sealed the deal for her.
“In this program and through my personal internship experience, it's been just truly amazing and has made me even more passionate,” she said.
Former Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe worked closely with the Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative to push the sister-city agreement over the finish line. Now, he is an advisor to the project and guides the students to remain ambitious but realistic.
He said the key to a sustainable sister-city partnership is for both parties to understand the work necessary to maintain a diplomatic relationship and commit to seeing projects through.
The Gainesville City Commission established its sister-city program in the 1980s with a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Soviet Union.
Poe is now director of the Greater Gainesville International Center and has played a role in similar partnerships, including those with cities in Iraq, Israel and Poland — many of which weren’t student-initiated.
Because of UF’s prominent international presence, Poe said it makes sense for its students and faculty to spearhead such a project.
But it can’t be exclusively student-run, he added, because people graduate and move on, which threatens the program’s stability. He said UF and Ukraine’s Gogol State University members must remain clear-eyed and priorities-driven, with a plan to fulfill shared goals.
“One thing is having a local group in both cities that takes ownership of the program and is willing to be held accountable, making sure that there are clear goals set,” he said. “If you try to take on too much, you're not going to be able to do much of anything at all.”
With the sister-city agreement solidified, members of the Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative can begin to work on their multi-pronged diplomatic agenda, which encompasses engineering, public health, agriculture and cultural affairs.
Students plan to build bomb shelters at Nizhyn bus stops and deliver medical and nutrition-based packages to its community. They will also design prosthetics for injured soldiers and deploy UF agricultural research to boost the city’s farming productivity.
The organization’s president, Mikhaylov, said he and his team can’t do it alone. UF students and Gainesville community members can pitch in vis-a-vis donations and volunteer work.
Mikhaylov said his team began collecting donations in early October. They’ve raised about $3,000, a fraction of what they’ll need to finance several expensive projects. Bomb shelter construction will cost about $19,000, and a nutritional package program about $5,000.
UF biomedical engineering junior Ivan Perevorukhov, vice president of the Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative, said anyone interested in becoming involved is welcome to attend general board meetings. From there, the team will find a role for a prospective member to serve. He said the skills needed to power the mission are diverse, meaning there’s room for everyone.
“Many of our members are people who don't want to sit idly by,” he said. “If you have something to bring to the table, we’ll gladly accept it. If not, we’ll either teach you or we'll learn together.”
Correction: This article originally stated the Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative bomb shelters were for soldiers. It has been updated to say they were built for civilians.
Contact Natalie Kaufman at nkaufman@alligator.org. Follow her on X @Nat_Kauf.
Natalie Kaufman is a sophomore journalism student and the Alligator's Fall 2024 Metro General Assignment reporter. In her free time, she likes drinking copious amounts of caffeine and running.
