August 24, 2022
983 evacuations this week
41,305 evacuations to date
We are writing on Tuesday night, as Ukraine begins the celebration of the 31st Independence Day. Though in the last 31 years, Ukraine has seen many momentous events, this year Independence Day bears unprecedented significance. Every minute of it vibrates with fresh memories of the enormous sacrifices the people of Ukraine make defending Ukraine’s independence against a monstrous and tyrannical enemy. For us, the Ukrainian citizen volunteers have epitomized the vibrant spirit of the free Ukraine that will come out victorious in this terrible war.
Writing this letter is particularly challenging this week. Due to extended curfews and the complex situation on the ground with intensifying bombardments all across Ukraine, not all volunteers have been able to provide reporting in time for this newsletter. We will include the information missed this week in the upcoming letter. Nevertheless the information that we have been able to receive this week alone is more than enough to celebrate.
Ukraine Team Milestones
Due to intensifying bombardment of civilian areas of Kharkiv, Mykolayiv, and Zaporizzhya, there is a spike in evacuations. Pavel’s team managed to evacuate 746 people; 313 of them - children.
On top of this effort each of the last three weeks including last one, six vehicles in Pavel’s fleet delivered food for roughly 5,000 people. Last week the aid was delivered into the villages around Mykolayiv situated right on the frontline, sometimes with the Russian army already present in the village.
Karina’s team evacuated 201 people, also adding an evacuation route out of Kharkiv.
137 people continue to live in the shelter that Karina operates.
Additionally, her team found a way to pass aid into the occupied territories feeding groups of people hiding in bomb shelters in the active fighting zone.
Andriy continued to evacuate people out of Marhanets, 16 people saved from that area. Additionally, 11 more people from his shelter were evacuated further west to Poland and Austria.
Andriy’s shelters continued to house 209 people.
Andriy’s team delivered 11 tons of aid to 1,200 families around the town of Brovary to the 11 villages that were occupied by the enemy earlier this year.
Meanwhile Andriy’s large scale warehouse facility continued to function distributing aid to registered displaced individuals. In addition to its main function, Andriy’s warehouse has been housing humanitarian aid. Ukraine TrustChain was able to procure and work with our Polish partners Be a Hero UA to deliver to Dnipro. Dina’s team collaborated with Andriy’s staff to reorganize a massive shipment of 1,600 boxes of medical supplies that our teams are distributing to local hospitals.
Simultaneously, Dina’s teams provided large food packages to 2,073 families last week. Dina took a trip to Kremenchuk, a city upstream on Dnieper river, where Dina’s organization “Vilny Liudi Vilna Krayina” is supporting a large number of refugees. Dina is looking for a new distribution point in Kremenchuk but hasn’t zeroed in on the final location yet.
Dina’s teams and the team of Inna Kampen shared a generous $5,000 grant that Ukraine TrustChain received from Carry the Future to sponsor the purchase of diapers and wet wipes for the refugee families. In less than a week the grant was fully and effectively allocated and the diapers have been distributed to refugee families.
Inna Kampen’s team evacuated 9 people this week and continues to run a massive operation helping 11,226 people. Food delivery is only part of the operations. A lot of efforts go into working with displaced, running camps for children, and finding other ways to help people whom this war plunged into poverty.
One of the stories Inna shared in her weekly report was about a child that was brought to Inna’s team summer camp. The volunteers noticed that the girl’s feet were bandaged and the bandages weren’t clean. As the volunteers tried to figure out what was wrong and what other help was needed, they realized that the family simply didn’t have money for shoes and the girl was wearing shoes two sizes two small that hurt and left wounds on her feet. The team contacted the family and is now providing them assistance.
Oleksandr Davydiuk has taken a typical volunteer vacation. Rather taking some rest he went closer to the front line to Dnipro, where he joined Inna Kampen’s group helping distributing aid and traveling with Inna’s caravans. As we were writing this letter Oleksandr was still on the road and wasn’t able to provide reporting on the teams we support through him. We will tell their stories in the upcoming week.
We have partnered up with Striving For All, an American nonprofit striving to ensure quality education for children in developing countries. Striving for All took a decisive step and stepped in as the primary donor to fix School # 14 in Chernihiv.
Ukrainian Prism, an organization we have supported on school repair projects on 3 additional schools in the Chernihiv region, might end up being the only schools to reopen on time thanks to the agility of volunteer teams.
Timur's team distributed aid packages provided by Birds of Light to the hard- hit Saltivka region and specifically to a large number of individuals who have disabilities and are homebound. In addition to the regular routes, they delivered over 200 packages to Lykhove, a small village in the Kharkiv Oblast'.
Kseniia’s volunteers continued repairs on two schools in the Kyiv region.
Despite looking for a more permanent base after the landlord took away Kseniia’s headquarters recently, Kseniia continued her efforts on multiple fronts. Earlier in the week, Kseniia travelled to central Ukraine. She found out that there were 300 refugee families that were nearly abandoned in a small village in Central Ukraine. Kseniia delivered aid there and established a connection with the community there, to continue supporting them in the future.
At the end of the week, Kseniia headed for Kharkiv, which prepared for several days of a full curfew due to the increasingly dangerous situation. Kharkiv has not had a curfew like this for months. We will talk about Kseniia’s visit in the next week’s newsletter.
After the break Natalia Mitsuta was back to work in Kyiv. She helped Ukraine TrustChain volunteers secure a donation of close to 1,500 decompression needles needed for volunteer medikits and combat medics. Although UTC helped make the connection and coordinate delivery, UTC financial resources were not involved in this transaction. The items were delivered to Kyiv by Bird of Light Ukraine, and their charismatic leader Zhanna.
In addition to that Ira and Natasha made the necessary purchases and sent two buses with humanitarian aid to the Eastern frontline. She continued her coordination with the Odesan and Kryvyi Rih teams.
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