December 28, 2022
48,544 people evacuated from danger to date
41 people evacuated this week
As we approach the end of 2022, we can’t help but reflect on the stories, photographs, phone and Zoom calls, videos, texts, and connections with volunteers in Ukraine that we here in the US have experienced. Many of these moments brought us closer to war and suffering; some of them made us cry from grief, others made us cry from awe. So many of these moments in the past 10 months for our US team led to deep humbleness and gratitude as we recognized the impact that connecting generous people like you all around the world with true-to-life heroes in Ukraine could have.
This week, we wanted to share with you some of the memories and moments that left impressions on our team in the US, but we also want to make sure to highlight the continuing heroism and steadfastness of our volunteers who persist with fierce life-saving missions in the cold and dark week after week. This week was no exception with multiple daring missions into the liberated areas and large-scale aid distribution described below.
Below, we have sketched some of the stories that members of our US team found most impactful:
We remember Jaroslav, a member of Timur’s team, who died on a landmine trying to deliver food to a trapped elderly person.
Pavel’s volunteers went from basement to basement in a city about to fall to the Russians and trying to convince people to leave their basements.
The location of Pavel’s group was compromised, and Russian shells start raining around their vehicles. In the meantime, a great-grandma runs after Pavel, trying to make sure he takes sour milk with him.
Andriy evacuating immobile grandmas in the lovingly outfitted luggage compartment of his coach buses.
Karina put together a shelter for displaced people in a week, initially using shipping pallets for beds.
The stories and the pictures when volunteers first went into the towns near Kyiv – from Bucha to Makariv. A friend's grandfather lives in Makariv, and the family lost touch with him for almost two months before it was liberated.
A daring evacuation of two women with disabilities from Lyman achieved in cooperation with Australian and Canadian volunteers.
The liberation of Kherson.
Our volunteers hiding in a field as they are afraid they had been spotted by artillery. And the remark to one of the volunteers wearing an orange shirt, “Get down, your shirt is too bright.”
It becomes nearly impossible with each passing week to choose stories from volunteers that speak to us because so many are remarkable feats of bravery which we had before only heard about in stories from grandparents and read about in books. These stories, the raw emotions on faces, the loving ways that people find to hold up one another while literally everything around them collapses are now part of our collective mosaic of the heroism and resistance possible deep inside even and especially when there is nothing left.
Ukraine Team Milestones
Kseniia’s Team — NGO Livyj Bereh
Kseniia’s team reported that they completed repairs on two more houses in the Kharkiv region using building materials financed by our donations. The total number of roofs Livyj Bereh fixed in the Kharkiv region to date is 16, with more construction on the way.
The Kherson team that we support through Kseniia continued to provide aid to the underserved villages around Kherson. One of the volunteers on that team, Svetlana, suffered a terrible tragedy last week, when her home was destroyed by Russian shelling of Kherson civilian areas. Despite this, in the last two weeks this team delivered 709 packages across 8 villages in the Kherson area.
We would like to share an extraordinary story from Kseniia about both their volunteer efforts as well as the way that everyday people show up for their communities each day.
Earlier in December, Kseniia met Natalia Oleksandrivna, the school director in the Makarov Village of the Charkiv region. This village was deoccupied at the beginning of September. The teacher had gone to the bombed-out school, collected textbooks under the rubble, "dried them a little," distributed them to the children who remained in the village and began to hold lessons in her son's house – a building which was badly destroyed (the roof damaged, no windows, one of the walls partially collapsed). In these conditions, Natalia Oleksandrivna teaches 7 children (grades 2, 3 and 4). The teacher says that she did it so that the children would start communicating with each other.
"At first they were very detached, after 4.5 months in the basements; now they are already starting to smile and play like normal children."
There is a stove in the house on which she prepares food for her students during the day (she cooks porridge and pasta, and parents bring canned food). Nearby is a basement where they can hide during shelling. After meeting the incredible teacher, Kseniia immediately realized that she wants to help improve learning conditions for children. Kseniia made a surprise for the children for St. Nicholas Day. Her team brought sweets, books, 7 tablets for the children, and a laptop for the teacher, which they will be able to use to study online.
The teacher shared that in a letter to St. Nicholas, the youngest child Kira wrote: "I want the war to end and for us to have a lot of diesel so that all the generators could work and it would be warm." Kseniia’s team is working to repair the roof of the house where the improvised school is based.
Natalia’s Team
As we write this letter, Natalia is out on a mission in the embattled area around Lyman, which we will be reporting on in our next newsletter. The previous week was spent in preparation packing up gifts for children in Lyman. Besides the presents and food packages, Natalia is bringing repair materials, including 31 double-glazed windows for the 10 families she identified during her last trip there.
Oleksandr’s Team
Oleksandr continues to coordinate an interconnected subnetwork of Ukraine TrustChain volunteer organizations across Ukraine:
Pavlo V’s team in Dnipro delivered food, vitamins and sweets for the New Year’s holiday to the Donetsk cities of Druzhkivka, Kostyantynivka and Mykolaivka.
Oleksandr S distributed clothes, household items and fuel for generators to victims of military aggression in the Kyiv region and residents of Krasnopil, in Sumy, who have been living under constant shelling. His team also delivered firewood to the Chernihiv Region and is preparing to restore and winterize bombed out buildings there to make them habitable for residents.
Vladyslav K’s team continues to deliver drinking water to Mykolaiv, making 11 trips this week, carrying 33 tons of water.
Sandra S continues to operate a kitchen in Odesa feeding 350 people, including 70 who are bedridden refugees.
Andriy P’s team brought a truck bearing 17 tons of food, 300 boxes of warm clothes and 180 bags of clothes and blankets from Chernivtsi, Tyachevo, Irshava and Mukachevo in Western Ukraine to Kherson and villages in the Kherson Region.
Kyryll is working in Chernivtsi to assist internally displaced persons. Over the past week his team has provided individual assistance and issued winter footwear to 40 refugee families in Chernivtsi and villages of the Dnistrovskyi District.
A transport company was used to send a palette of food and clothes from Ilnitsa to Izyum, supplying 22 people and families with food and warm clothes.
Oksana K from Lutsk has taken two trips to Poland, bringing back 1,100 kg of food, 50 kg of hygiene products and 200 kg of warm clothes, which were issued to 34 displaced people and families. Tragically, one of the families that received Oksana’s aid, including the family’s children, was killed by a direct hit to their house shortly after the supplies were delivered. This is the brutal reality of this war.
Oleksandr Z’s NGO “Star of Hope,” also in Lutsk, bought urgently needed medicine for people in the village of Kniahinok and sent food to three families in Zaporizhzhia. Oleksandr prepared packages to send to disabled children in Kherson and continues to distribute eyeglasses and reading materials to displaced persons. Oleksandr also operates a children’s cafe where children with disabilities and displaced people have the opportunity to work with crafts and where children receive rehabilitation services.
Viktor V in Lutsk sent a humanitarian truck to Dnipro from the German charitable foundation Humedica. The cargo included furniture, winter clothing, food, hygiene items and medicine.
Two elderly people with health problems were evacuated out of Kherson. They had first asked to be evacuated, then changed their minds, but decided to leave after all when their high-rise building was hit by a rocket.
Timur’s Team
Timur’s team regularly delivers to homebound elderly, and we were particularly touched by the recent delivery in the video below. Many of the team members were sick last week, but they still managed to deliver 300 packages of aid, including blankets and hygiene kits to the village of Bezryki, and 300 to Kup'yans'k-Vuzlovyi. They also threw a special celebration for the children in Saltovka with 250 gifts for the season. Many of the children must still live in cellars as there is no heat or electricity in their destroyed homes. The team continues to procure the much-needed blankets and flashlights and will be planning more deliveries to deoccupied areas.
Karina’s Team
This was a very busy week for Karina’s team. They received a large shipment of stoves sponsored by Ukraine TrustChain that they ordered a couple of weeks ago. The stoves are going to Kherson and will be distributed with the help of a different NGO there.
Meanwhile, the team evacuated 39 injured civilians from a hospital in Bakhmut to hospitals in Pavlograd and Dnipro. Karina’s shelter continued to host 143 people, families with children. The team organized a large holiday celebration for them and another one for children in an orphanage in Dnipro and distributed gifts and candy.
Dina’s Team
Dina’s NGO cofounder, Serhiy Tiora traveled from Kharkiv to Lyman to deliver aid. This was a long-awaited and long-planned cooperation between his church, Ukraine TrustChain, Bird of Light, and other NGO’s. They delivered warming stoves and chimneys for them, blankets, food, hygiene products, candles, and more.
Dina’s team is busy distributing holiday-themed food packages to internally displaced people in Kremenchuk, Poltava, Krasnokutsk, and Dnipro. The packages vary by location, but in each place the volunteers had the holiday meals in mind and included items like canned peas, pickles, eggs, and mayonnaise, ingredients for the traditional olivier salad, without which no New Year celebration is complete. In addition, they treated the kids with festive bags of candy and clementines.
In Kremenchuk, Yulia Plop is concluding her month-long endeavor to create magic for displaced children. If you have been following this story, you might remember that she started by collecting letters to Santa from the children, which included wishes for peace, a swift return home, and some most desired toys. Among the most popular requests were soccer balls and a pregnant Barbie. Yulia’s friends in Kyiv and Kharkiv spent weeks shopping for the coveted items, wrapping them, and mailing them to her. Many people contributed to this effort. Finally, Yulia was able to start distributing the gifts.
In one of the videos she sent us, she tells the children gathered that she could not send their letters to Ded Moroz (Soviet-originated equivalent of Santa). She asks, “How does Ded Moroz travel?” The kids yell, “in a flying sleigh!” Yulia says, “that’s right! But this year, he can’t fly over Ukraine because we have our air defense system and our military protecting us, so instead I sent your letters to St Nicholas. He travels by train, and he asked me to give you these gifts.” While some of the children were delighted by their gifts, others appeared stunned and withdrawn. They simply said a quiet thank you and returned to their seats without displaying any emotion. The trauma of war is evident on their faces.
In Dnipro, Dina created a similar festive atmosphere for refugees that she helps. There are 600 people in the group, and a few weeks ago she asked them tell her what their greatest needs were. Some asked for a thermos, some for a blanket, some for hygiene products, or food. Along with her two volunteers, she spent weeks ordering, shopping, organizing and preparing. Finally on 12/25 she invited everyone to come and receive their gifts, along with sweets and fruit for the children, and tickets to one of two shows: a cirque on ice, or a jazz concert of Sinatra songs. The tickets were graciously donated by the performing theaters.
All together this week, Dina’s team distributed 823 packages of food, 160 gifts for kids, 546 gifts for adults, and 460 tickets to holiday shows.
Tetiana’s Team
Tetiana and her team brought aid to the family with 9 children (3 biological and 6 who are under their care now because of war). The family now lives in Rebedailivka - a village close to Smila and, despite what they had been through, they are hopeful that they will overcome the difficult situation and build a good life for themselves and all the children.
The team also visited an orphanage in Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi and brought food, school items, and cleaning supplies. It was a difficult trip – their car broke down several times and one of the car windows fell down on the way there, but they persevered and even prepared presents for the upcoming kids holiday in the car during the trip. Unfortunately, they arrived during an air raid so all the children were in the basement.
Tetiana’s team traveled to the summer camp that now houses refugees. They brought food, fuel for the generator, cleaning supplies and sweets for the children there. They also paid for the services of the electrician and electrical supplies to upgrade the wiring in the camp so that it can handle heaters.
In the evenings the team prepared for the holidays they were organizing for 400 displaced children in Smila. They decorated the cafe where the event was held, made sure they had backup power for when electricity goes out, brought in and decorated Christmas tree, dressed up in costumes and brought up the children’s spirits.
Inna’s Team
Inna’s team continues large-scale aid distribution to the areas of greatest needs while additionally running projects to provide stoves and additional assistance into the red zones. 11,430 people received assistance, and a total of 32.1 tons of aid were distributed.
2 tons of aid and a generator were delivered to Bahmut, helping about 100 people. In Kherson, Inna’s team distributed bread to 900 people, and larger food packages to 50 families. Another 50 families received winter-related aid items (blankets, portable gas stoves). In the deoccupied territories of the Khakiv region, they distributed aid to 6,500 people.
Pavel’s Team
Earlier this week Pavel and Elena took а trip to Germany to find additional sources for bringing in humanitarian aid. Both of them got sick along the way and warned that they would be unable to send in the reports in time. Their organization is operating as usual, however, and we received pictures from aid distribution in the Sumy region.
Andriy’s Team — NGO Pomahaem
850 families received help in Andriy’s Dnipro warehouse. Winter holiday celebrations were held at the shelter still housing 121 people. Andriy’s mobile teams continue to travel this week delivering 250 aid packages around Dnipro.
Andriy has also launched a new initiative providing help to families with children many of who have been displaced by the war. The focus of this program is to deliver firewood which families use in their potbelly stoves this winter.
Alena’s Team
Last week for Alena’s team was spent in preparation for a trip to a dangerous area near the frontline to a recently liberated tiny town of Novokievka. As of the writing of this newsletter, Alena has successfully completed this mission and we will write more about it next week.
Alena has asked that we share this touching video below with UTC’s supporters. Alena wrote the text for the video, and her daughter translated and recorded it. We hope that this show of gratitude reflects how impactful your donations and support continue to be for Ukrainians in the war zone.
US Team Updates
We would like to thank “Verein Solidar Elgg-weltweit” - an association of the village of Elgg in Еаstern Switzerland with about 5,000 inhabitants - for raising funds to support the work described in this report. We love learning that awareness of Ukraine TrustChain and the efforts of the extraordinary volunteers in Ukraine we support is spreading around the world.
How to Help
Donate - The money goes directly to teams providing aid on the ground, who respond dynamically to the most urgent needs.
Fundraise - Organize fundraisers at your school, work, place of worship, with friends and family, etc.
Spread the word - Share our website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn with your friends, family, and colleagues.
Fill out this form if you’re interested in volunteering with us, and we’ll let you know when opportunities come up.
Download and print our flyer. Ask your local coffee shop if you can add it to the bulletin, or use it as part of your fundraiser.