The project St. Nicholas Helpers was started in 2014 by two Ukrainian Rotaractors, Olechka Kosovych from Ivano-Frankivsk and Tetyana Levchenko from Kharkiv. The idea was to bring Ukrainian traditions to the Donbas region. Therefore the young ladies decided to visit a school in Sloviansk, the first city in the Donetsk region that had been occupied by separatist forces and then liberated by the Ukrainian army.
Over the years, Olechka and Tetyana visited more and more schools in the Donbas, all in proximity of occupied territories.
If at the very beginning, Dirk Lustig was mainly helping to organise the funding of the project, he soon became a St. Nicholas Helper too, touring the Donbas.
Their aim became to offer sweets to at least 1’000 kids living near the frontline. They reached it each year, often with great difficulties, especially in times of COVID 19.
In 2021, Rotarian Olha Petrova from Kyiv gifted Dirk a white St. Nicholas dress at the beginning of their trip to the East. From that day on, he became… St. Nicholas!
With the start of the full scale invasion in February 2022, all previously visited schools, except the ones in and around Sloviansk, went under Russian occupation. The new SNH Team, now composed of DG Vitalii Lesko from Rivne and Club President Yuliia Pavichenko from RC Kharkiv Nadiya redesigned the project and decided to visit children living in liberated territories and next to the 1’000+ km “hot” contact line of active fighting. For the past three years this was achieved by travelling 4’000+ km, during two weeks, in up to 10 “oblasts” (regions) of Ukraine, organising up to 30 events and offering gifts to a record 1’600 kids (2024).
In 2025, Dirk with a new team will visit eight regions along the frontline, from Sumy, Kharkov, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Kherson to Odesa, to bring gifts and celebrations, warmth and hope to kids who for the fourth year of the full scale war, are suffering from electricity cuts & cold, destruction of their homes & schools and are daily exposed to murderous shellings.