UK charity Book Aid International has joined English PEN and PEN International in supporting PEN Ukraine’s Unbreakable Libraries project with a donation of 25,000 brand-new books, all of which have been generously provided free of charge by leading UK publishers. The books will support libraries throughout Ukraine including in front-line and liberated territories, and are expected to arrive in Kyiv in September 2023.
Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the library network across all regions of Ukraine has been systematically suffering from heavy bombardments. More than 570 Ukrainian libraries have been damaged and completely or partly lost their book collections. Some of them have been forced to move to safer regions of Ukraine.
The increasing number of internally displaced persons (IDP) — some 5 million people at the end of June 2023 — and the frequent power outages in all the regions of Ukraine have affected the work of libraries, with a growing public interest in printed books, and a lack of them.
In response, PEN Ukraine launched the Unbreakable Libraries project in June 2022 to support Ukrainian libraries. Since then, with the support of international partners, Ukrainian publishers and Ukrainian citizens, PEN Ukraine has collected and sent books in Ukrainian and English to libraries in the Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Sumy, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Donetsk regions. This additional donation of 25,000 books will enable PEN Ukraine to expand its campaign and support more institutions.
The books will be shipped overland from Book Aid International’s South London warehouse to a central depot in Kyiv, and from there to libraries by PEN Ukraine in partnership with the Nova Post Company.
To recall, in June, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that the Cabinet of Ministers is preparing a draft law to establish English as the language of international communication in Ukraine. The government is also working on measures to make the learning of English more accessible to everyone interested.
