We, the Canada-Ukraine Foundation (CUF) were established to coordinate, develop, organize, and deliver assistance projects generated by Canadians and directed to Ukraine.

After the slightly chaotic response to the Euromaidan unrest in Ukraine in 2014 and the early days of the conflict, we started to prioritize needs and established criteria for our own humanitarian response. 

Our initial focus of support was on injured civilian and military after the conflict started.

Through our volunteers on the ground, we were able to create a database of those requiring medical assistance. As the focus moved towards the conflict in the East, in order to identify who to select for assistance, we sent a medical team from Canada to Ukraine to identify the best approach to providing support.

Our team proposed the deployment of medical missions/teams to military hospitals dealing with craniofacial injures (the lists of patients requiring assistance were provided by the relevant ministry). We also had discussions on the ground with Caritas Ukraine and saw together the need to provide funding for child trauma therapy – targeting those who had been identified by Caritas Ukraine’s own needs assessment processes.

Our medical missions in Ukraine have been widely popularized by Victor Malarek on the CTV’s W5 show. Between 2014 and 2017 we have sponsored five missions to Ukraine.

Within those missions, Canadian surgeons and nurses have completed 244 operations on 137 Ukrainian activists and soldiers wounded during the Maidan revolution in 2014 and the subsequent war in Eastern Ukraine.