Baking for Ukraine
I was reading what was mostly a photography spread showcasing ordinary Ukrainians bravely forging on, and liked this story of a baker
Five years ago, Vladyslav Malashchenko, 26, opened Good Bread From Good People, a bakery that employs adults with mental or psychological disabilities and specializes in cakes and hot lunches. On the day before Russian Army units rolled onto Ukrainian soil, Malashchenko, sensing the impending crisis, held a meeting with the staff, in which they decided to stop selling to individual customers and bake bread for the public good.
They quickly procured an additional 150 kilograms of flour and set to work. “I am not militant in my nature,” Malashchenko said, “but I can bake bread.” Throughout the opening weeks of the conflict, the bakery produced about 300 loaves of bread a day, almost all of which it has given away — some to a home for adults with cognitive disabilities, the rest to volunteer organizations, which distribute it in Kyiv. Malashchenko plans to keep baking. “Now, at this time of great need in Kyiv,” he said, “we need to continue our work.”
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/18/magazine/ukraine-war-kyiv.html