Since 2015, Initiative E+ has been running summer camps for the children of fallen, missing and captured defenders. This year we managed to keep the project alive — and we're looking for sponsors for the next sessions.
This summer in Verkhovyna, another session of our summer camp for the children of fallen, missing and captured Ukrainian defenders has just wrapped up. The children spent two weeks in the mountains. And — judging by their faces, by the evening conversations, by the photos from the hikes — everyone loved it. It's for exactly those faces that this programme has existed now for its eleventh year in a row.
Initiative E+ has been running summer camps for the children of Ukrainian defenders since 2015 — from the time when, after the Revolution of Dignity and the beginning of the war in the east, a whole generation of children began to appear in Ukraine whose parents had stayed at the front forever or gone missing. Over these years, hundreds of children have passed through the camps — and for many of them, these were the first days in a long time when they could stop being "the child of a fallen hero" and just be a child.
For years, this project existed thanks to the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Ukraine. We are sincerely grateful to our Czech partners for years of consistent support — without them, these camps in their current form simply wouldn't exist.
This year, Czech funding for the project was interrupted. And we faced a question: do we continue? Giving up on a project that has been built over years and into which so much work has been invested wasn't something we could do. So we went looking for funds elsewhere.
The support came from our friends and donors at Chernovetskyi Investment Group, with whom we have also been working since 2015: together we have delivered vehicles for medical evacuation, purchased equipment for hospitals, and are currently carrying out the renovation of departments at the Chernihiv Hospital. CIG also previously supported us with funding for the children's camps in the Carpathians in 2023 and 2024. Thank you for this consistent support and help!
The session lasted two weeks. In that time, the children got a lot done:
Each of these things sounds ordinary — until you remember that for many of these children, this was the first summer in a long time they spent as children, not as "the child of someone who isn't here anymore." No one there asked where mum was, where dad was. There, you just headed up to the next peak.
In August, there will be another session — at the "Smerichka" camp. For its funding, we owe a separate thank-you to our fantastic Finnish partners at Karavanen till Ukraina. This is the same team that regularly brings vehicles, tactical medicine and equipment for the military to Ukraine. This summer, their support has moved into another dimension — into care for the children of those this war has taken.
We very much want to run at least one or two more sessions this year. For that we need sponsors — companies, foundations, private individuals ready to invest in a concrete project with a clear result.
Every session means dozens of children for whom two weeks in the mountains can mean an enormous amount. This isn't "aid in general." These are specific children, a specific camp, specific dates. And work we know how to do — since 2015.
If you or your organisation would like to support the next sessions, please write to us through the website helpeplus.org or contribute through our DONATE page.
Thank you to everyone who makes these two weeks in the mountains possible.
Thank you to those who stand with us.
