Hello friends, both old and new. My name is Mark Kitchell, and I am a dual US-French citizen who has lived and worked in Luxembourg for 12 years. I am a child of the Cold War and have traveled many times behind the Iron Curtain, including a trip to Moscow in the early 1980s. My father was a combat veteran of WWII, fighting Nazi Germany, and he taught me at a very young age about the capacity of man to be cruel and evil.
Later this summer, I will make my fourth trip to Ukraine since the full-scale war started. On each trip, I helped deliver an ambulance to first responders in Ukraine. In 2022, I went to Dnipro, in 2023 to Kramatorsk (Donbas), and in January of this year, as part of a
German-Ukrainian organization, we delivered an ambulance to Kharkiv. Data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health tells us that each ambulance donated to Ukraine saves an average of 250 lives before it is destroyed or stops working. So, this summer, I am fundraising to purchase a used ambulance and will contribute €3,000 (or more) of my own funds. In late August, I will personally drive this ambulance to Ukraine.
For this project, I am grateful to partner with LUkraine, a Ukrainian-run NGO founded in 2014 in Luxembourg. Since 2022, LUkraine has sent a total of 118 ambulances and fire trucks to Ukraine. LUkraine is also a public interest organization in Luxembourg, which means the organization is carefully vetted and audited, and donations are tax-deductible for Luxembourg taxpayers. The ambulance will be delivered to the Medical Detachment of the Ukrainian 37th Marine Brigade, which is currently in Donbas. The ambulance will be used to save the lives of soldiers and civilians.
I am asking you to make a generous donation so we can purchase a workable, used ambulance which will cost €13,000-€15,000. All donations for this project will go directly to the 'donorbox' controlled by LUkraine. The funds will be used only to purchase the ambulance, fuel, and to fill it with medical supplies. All travel costs (hotel, food, etc.) for my trip to Ukraine will be paid from my personal funds only, so you can be sure 100% of your donation goes to purchase and deliver this life-saving vehicle.
