Sit behind the geraniums? That is not spent on the Tilburgse Piet Spijkers (85). He has been committed to children in Ukraine for more than thirty years. That is why he was appointed by the country on Friday as Knight First Division in order of merit. Piet is the first Dutchman to get this high award. “I am not so proud of myself, but I think this is great.”
In 1992 Piet started helping children in the Ukrainian town of Lyiv. There were victims of the nuclear disaster in the ‘Chernobyl hospital’. With his Humanitarian Aid Children Ukraine, the building was refurbished and new beds and more knowledge and skills came.
Twenty years ago Piet received his first award and five years later he received the second. Now he receives his third award from the ambassador of Ukraine in the Leyhoeve residential landscape in Tilburg. “I am surprised because this is the last and highest distinction. Higher and more beautiful cannot.”
“They had sent an email from the capital Kiev and afterwards the embassy sent a letter that President Zensky has appointed me.” Piet is the only one who has had such a distinction in the Netherlands so far. “That’s because I’ve been doing this for more than thirty years. People who have been doing this for ten years get the first or second award. Most people are dead among the third.”
Piet is working on various projects with his foundation. “We help children who are kicked on a mine and have an amputation. They get a prosthesis or a mobility scooter. We have also renovated an orphanage and we try to get children in prison free.”
“Otherwise they were sent into the meadow with a goat or cow, now they can participate in normal life.”
One of the projects that Piet is most proud of is a laser device for treating mutilated children. “And the program ‘Speaking and understanding with computer’ for deaf children. Otherwise they were sent into the meadow with a goat or cow and now they can participate in normal life.”
The war does not stop Piet from still going to Ukraine. “The powerlessness does play. You want to do more, but you can’t do everything. And you can’t go anywhere because it is too close to the line of fire.”
In two weeks Piet will go that way again to help with the projects and to set up new things. “And this time I will also celebrate my birthday there,” says Piet. “The people there are really like a second family.”
Last year Omroep Brabant made a portrait about Piet:
