Our Mission Statement
The goal of the Ashland/Sviatohirsk Sister City Project is to promote, foster and maintain a mutually beneficial and rewarding collegial relationship with a city in Ukraine on a long term basis. This kind of relationship traditionally includes reciprocal activities in the areas of education, the arts, and business and may include student and teacher exchange programs, scholarship funds, cultural events, language training programs via zoom, and potential business partnerships and promotions. Ashland has maintained such a relationship with Guanahuato, Mexico for over 50 years.
However, it is the sad reality that in the short-term, Ukrainian cities are under siege by an aggressive, genocidal neighbor and need help in ways they cannot immediately reciprocate. Our intention, therefore, is to offer support now to a sister city that’s shown itself to be courageous and resilient in the face of unimaginable suffering, in the confidence that when the war is over, our partner city will regain its strength and capacity to be a full and generous partner in an ongoing and mutually supportive relationship.
The first step in establishing warm and effective communication between mayors has already been taken with an introductory zoom call on May 30 between Mayor Tonya Graham and Mayor Ribalkin of Sviatohirsk. The town has also provided us with a breakdown of their immediate needs which is printed on our website: ASAPAshland.org.
The good news is that on June 20, the Ashland City Council unanimously passed the resolution to adopt Sviatohirsk as our sister city with the aim of helping it, and by extension, all of Ukraine recover from the devastation and horror of the Russian invasion.
With the backing of the Ashland City government we intend to help our partner city restore its municipal infrastructure, through fundraising to purchase garbage trucks, police cars, water treatment plants and the like, which were all looted by the Russians. We cannot hope to make a dent in the over-all suffering of Ukraine, but we can help one small town.
