Camo netting event

This is a very quick update. The last weekend there was a camo netting event organised at my favourite camo netting place, by_porokhova. It was a happy coincidence that I arrived in Lviv on Thursday. In 2 days dozens of nets were made, by what seemed as over 100 people, and that’s a low estimate. I stayed for 7 hours on Sunday and 3 on Saturday.

In these 2 days 1002 square meters of net was produced!

The reason for this event is that they had a lot of orders to sort out and the winter is approaching, meaning new nets with different colours are needed. The nets were a mix of different colour combinations, like the one above, and 3 others. The volunteers, some doing nets for the first time, where mostly Ukrainians with a few foreign volunteers, like me, with experience in doing this kind of nets.

It was such a wonderful experience, to see people so engaged and wanting to help. Volunteering takes time and for Ukrainians who also need to work and do all the things someone has to do – cook, clean, take the children to school – finding time for volunteering is not easy. Just travelling to get there can take 30 minutes to an hour. We, foreigners, can afford to eat out or take away. For us it makes sense. I am staying only 2 weeks, so I need to maximize what I’m doing and not spend lots of time buying fresh veggies to cook, in a very small kitchenette. I assumed that this is the reason there aren’t more volunteers involved and this event proved my assumption was correct. People want to do more, but they can’t.

I am so happy that I was a part of this event. There were so many volunteers, laughter, food, homemade traditional drinks, freshly picked pears and apples. A pizza place donated a lot of pizzas (maybe 20 if not more). The results are amazing and these nets will make their way to the frontlines this week.