WINNIPEG, Canada - East Kildonan Dental Group, a locally owned and operated dental office located in Winnipeg, Canada, is proud to announce that one of their dentists, Dr. Alex Serebenitski, recently started an innovative T-shirt initiative with all of the proceeds being sent to support the people of Ukraine.
Dr. Alex is a Ukrainian-born Canadian citizen and is very involved in the Ukrainian community through dancing in Rusalka and other initiatives. When he saw the heartbreaking images from his native Ukraine on the television news stations, he knew that he could not sit back but rather had to do something to help the citizens of Ukraine.
Inspired by the leadership of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Dr. Alex recognized that Zelenskyy always wore a green army-coloured shirt when talking to the press or making any public appearances. Consequently, Dr. Alex used that green shirt as the basis for his concept, adding some text onto the back of the shirt, in small lettering at the top by the neck. The wording which is written in Ukrainian says "Slava Ukraini", which translates to "Glory to Ukraine. " This is a popular patriotic saying that holds even more true now during these difficult times.
Wanting to ensure that he raised as much money as possible with the sale of the shirts, Dr. Alex was set to pay for the cost of the shirts with his own money. He then was introduced to Lorne Mack who is the owner of a local company, www.PrintedShirts.ca located in Winnipeg, who was incredibly generous and helpful offering to print shirts at a reduced cost to maximize the impact and printed an initial batch of 100 shirts. The idea was to sell the shirts for anywhere between $20 and $30 of donation per shirt, but within hours of promoting the shirts on social media, all 100 had sold out, with some people donating up to $180 per shirt. Motivated by these results, Dr. Alex then launched an Instagram account, @ukraineshirtproject, and ordered even more shirts. So far, the initiative has sold and pre-sold over 800 shirts to date with over $20,000 raised and donated for the efforts of the Ukrainian army forces to defend the citizens of Ukraine.
"We never thought we could raise this much awareness about the situation in Ukraine and so much funds to help the Ukrainian army," said Dr. Alex Serebenitski of EK Dental. "But I guess just like many others, we under-estimated President Zelenskyy's impact on the world in such a short time span."
East Kildonan Dental Group is a locally owned and operated business located in Winnipeg, Canada. Their dental office was initially established in 1949 and, over the years, has become a staple in East Kildonan. They take pride in offering a variety of dental services to many friends and families over the years. For more information about the company and the various services they provide, visit its website at https://ekdentalgroup.com/. For more information about the Ukraine Shirt Project visit the Instagram account @ukraineshirtproject.