Interview with Oleksiy Goncharenko, Ukrainian MP

This is Matthew Parish of the Lviv Herald. And I have the pleasure of meeting Oleksiy Goncharenko of the Goncharenko Centre here in Odesa, and he's going to give us a tour of the centre and of its works. Oleksiy, thank you very much.

Welcome. Thank you for visiting us. So we are in one of 41centres of this kind. We are the biggest educational cultural network in Ukraine. We have 41 centres and this is one of them. So what do we do? So we started before the [full scale] invasion, and our main area is of responsibility is education and culture. Here is our schedule, for example, for this week. So today we have Saturday. So just it was finished the culinary master class, and at 3:30pm so in five minutes, the Ukrainian language speaking club will start. And after this, it will be the French language speaking club, but we also have the English language club. Everything is free of charge in our centres. So it is education for children, for adults, for everybody.

So here is so here is our classroom, and in five minutes, they will start the lesson on Ukrainian language. It's also important, because we have a lot of people IDPs, but also local people who want to improve their Ukrainian.

So these are Ukrainian people who have been internally displaced and their first language is Russian. They want to improve their Ukrainian as part of the process of national integration.

Yes, and hopefully this year, our centres will not charge you for your personal decision. So near one quarter is IDPs, and three quarters are local people [from Odesa], approximately.

But after the start of full scale invasion, we also started to arrange volunteer work across the whole country. So here, for example, is the 3D printing system. Let me show you. So these what they're doing. It's parts of grenades, which are needed by our army. This is for grenades, for drones to drop, and things like this. So it's at the same time we teach, for example, teenagers, how to use it. So it's education, but at the same time, we're doing something practical that our army needs. So this printing for example.

So and here we are doing nets and camouflage. So the Russians made the city miserable, and we from we started the next day, so from 23 February 2022, we have made 5,000 nets. So it's a lot. We are the biggest producer from volunteering centres in the southern part of Ukraine, and we have also made 4,000 small pillows.

Next, this wonderful lady, by her hands, is making pillows for our army with the help of other wonderful ladies. So you here, you see the process, and here they continue. Now it's fewer people [than before], but it's happening every day.

We are not making arms. We're making non-lethal support for our soldiers. There are people doing this all over Ukraine. Isn't that beautiful? [pointing to a blue and yellow pillow]

You see this, for example, these nets already are prepared. Then the military people will come and take the nets. So it's already finished production, which is ready. So that's what we are doing. And we have 41 centres like this across the country. We also have a centre in Lviv, in the centre. So you are welcome there to.

Some of the army items. Does [the army] help you fund the centres? Does it help fund your work?

We don't receive any penny of budget money. But we have a lot of private sponsors. Some of them are domestic, and others are international. We have number of Ukrainian companies in each city where we open. So for example we don't pay for premises or our offices.

So first, our partner in Kyiv is [ ]. For our centre in Kiev, it is given to us by this business free of charge. So they are our partner. They don't take money from us, the same without this office, the same in Lviv everywhere, the same. So these are first type of our partners who gives us free of charge premises. The second type of our partners, those who are giving us money to run all of things. So we have Ukrainian companies, as I told you. We have British donors. We have Lord Michael Ashcroft, for example, the British billionaire, and he was a Conservative Party politician.

So before you met our funny [staff member] Paulina [with the pillows]. I want to thank her for the job she's doing. And military people are very grateful for her pillows, and for her love and for all she's doing. And they're writing letters to her, and that is a big honour for her.

This is a wonderful thing.

Yes, it's a wonderful because, like you could tell her, that life on the front line is very difficult. So these, these, these small gifts make life more comfortable with the things she produces. And we always put something tasty [in the parcels for the soldiers] and some small carpets for drivers.

We have also have, for example, we're receiving grants, for example, from the German International Agency for Development. So we have a lot of international partners and local. That's how we run things and and we are expanding soon. I think maybe even in August, we will open the 14th centre, in Uman [a city in central Ukraine].

It's amazing amount of work. Now you're also a Deputy in the Ukrainian National Parliament. So you have a lot of obligations, both in the parliamentary system and also with everything else [in your life]. How do you how do you find time to live your life?

I will not complain. I mean, our guys are in the trenches, their life is much more complicated and difficult than mine is. So we all doing what we can. I have my area of responsibilities, as a Member of the Parliament, Also I represent Ukraine in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. And I also run this network of our centres. So this is my input into our common victory. So that's what I can do.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, thank you very much for your time. It's been a real pleasure and an honour to look around the Goncharenko Centre and to learn about your network. Slava Ukraini! [Glory to Ukraine!]

Heroem Slava! [Glory to the Heroes!] Thank you very much.