Our Mission:
Vermont Plants Sunflowers for Ukraine is a Vermont-based community action group. Our mission is to inspire countless acts of solidarity with the people of Ukraine by sharing thousands of free seed packets and inspiring the planting of hundreds of thousands of sunflowers in every corner of Vermont. Come late summer and fall, our message of multi-colored sunflowers splashed against our blue Vermont sky will give us all hope and inspiration for positive action. Every seed planted will be a statement of solidarity.
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our Action Plan:
In our third year, 2024, and in the third year of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, we ask every town and city in Vermont, our state government, churches, schools, libraries, organizations, businesses and individual Vermonters to join in this act of solidarity by planting sunflowers. As our sunflowers grow and blossom, our collective attention to the needs in Ukraine will grow. Our sunflowers will inspire Vermonters and others to support organizations working to meet the health and safety needs of the Ukrainian people during this humanitarian crisis.
3/31/22 - Thank you to WCAX Channel 3 News for highlighting VPSU and our Vermont-based solidarity action for the people of Ukraine. Within hours of this airing, we are already receiving a lot of new inquires, expressions of support and questions about how to participate.
American Flatbread, Waitsfield, VT
Every day we pause to take in our landscape from our home in Vermont. The beauty and tranquility is breathtaking. We have spent our entire adult lives putting down roots in this place we call home. Every Ukrainian must feel the same about the country that they love, the place they call home. This solidarity effort is simply an effort to recognize that love of place, the love that all people have of the place where they live, work and play. As stated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, every child, woman and man on this earth has the right to peace, dignity and equality on a healthy planet. This is who we are and why we will plant.
Photo credit: Anson Tebbets, Tebbets Farm, Cabot, VT