The mayor of State College’s sister city in Ukraine will visit the borough on Monday to meet with local residents and officials.
Community members can meet Oleksandr Kodola, mayor of Nizhyn, from 6:15 to 6:45 p.m. in council chambers at the State College Municipal Building, ahead of Borough Council’s 7 p.m. meeting.
It will be Kodola’s first visit to State College since the signing of a memorandum of understanding establishing the sister city relationship in May 2023. The partnership aims to foster cultural exchange, civic collaboration and support between the two communities.
“Even though we are geographically located way too far away from each other, right now at this moment we are so close,” Kodola said at the signing. “All Nizhnites and Ukrainians will never forget this day.”
The sister city agreement was signed a little over a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started the still-ongoing war there.
The effort that led to the partnership was sparked by Svitlana Budzhak-Jones, a native of Ukraine and longtime State College resident, and the Highlands Civic Association, who had been working since 2022 to raise money to help with critical infrastructure repairs in Nizhyn.
In addition to the two municipalities’ similar population and positions as college towns, Budzhak-Jones told council that they settled on Nizhyn because of the extent of the damage. It did not experience total damage in the Russian invasion to the extent the State College community could not provide meaningful help. But it did see infrastructure damage that needed be fixed, including to a central boiler station that was unable to provide heat and hot water.
Budzhak-Jones and fellow residents in 2022 founded Sister’s Sister, a nonprofit organization to provide humanitarian relief to Nizhyn. Thousands of dollars raised by State College area residents helped to repair the city’s most damaged boiler, ensuring a district of 5,000 residents had heat in the winter, Kodola said, adding that funds also helped by sterilizers for a hospital’s maternity ward.
Nizhyn has established sister city relationships with multiple towns in the U.S. and Europe since the Russian invasion, which have helped provide aid through fundraising efforts as it deals with damage from periodic drone and missile attacks.
