Pumpkin kin: how a village in Dnipropetrovsk region finds its identity

Malomykolaivka, a small village in the Dnipropetrovsk region, has plans to become the pumpkin capital of Ukraine. How to wake up a declining village, make it special, start a unique festival and craft production with one's own brand thanks to a product that is usually used for cattle feed, Rubryka explains.

It's not the first year that the problem of the decline of Ukrainian villages has been discussed. During the years of independence, more than 500 villages have officially disappeared from the map of Ukraine, and almost 5,000 more are on the verge of extinction. Lack of jobs forces young people and people of working age to leave their homes and go to work elsewhere. There are fewer and fewer villagers willing to buy a plot of land. Houses are empty and falling apart, once fertile gardens and orchards are overgrown with weeds.

Over the last 20 years, the population of Malomykolaivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region has also decreased significantly. The main reasons are the same: lack of infrastructure, poor transport links to other settlements, catastrophic lack of jobs. The village is on the verge of survival, but Malomykolaivka residents don't want to give up. Saving their native village and making it attractive for locals and tourists is the goal set by the head of the Petrivske village district, which includes the village of Malomykolaivka, Svitlana Harnadko, and her associates.