April 18
26,019 evacuations to date
(3,201 evacuations this week)
50,000+ people fed weekly
Ukraine Teams Milestones
This week, Pavel’s team evacuated 2,075 people, 998 of them - children. To date, his team has evacuated 14,974 people from life-threatening regions. Pavel’s team has also brought in approximately 100 tons of aid to devastated areas.
Kyiv teams (Kseniia and Natasha) continue to push further into the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas. As community members, volunteers are able to identify rural areas where the need is extreme. These villages are often hard to access, and require careful planning of fuel requirements and meticulous coordination between teams.
For $7,000 Ukraine TrustChain sponsored a new van for our Dnipro team lead Karina that will be used for evacuations.
This week, Karina’s team is sending a bus that holds 60 people to Kharkiv to assist evacuation efforts. Part of the effort now is convincing people in Eastern Ukraine to evacuate.
For $10,500, our organization funded personal protection for Pavel’s heroic team of 30+ volunteer drivers. Our Dnipro teams sourced and tested the vests to make sure that they were good quality.
Andriy’s volunteers continued to evacuate 150 people per day, running 1-2 buses daily.
US Teams Update
TrustChain founder Daniil spoke with Neil C. Hughes on his popular podcast Tech Talks Daily.
We would like to thank community fundraising events that took place last week:
Thank you to The Community Church in Lake Bluff, IL, which organized an incredible fundraising event in support of Ukraine TrustChain on Saturday, the 16th.
Thank you to those who joined the Zoom fundraising event for Russian contemporary poetry readings this Sunday, the 17th.
Thank you to those who are involving young people in activism for Ukraine at schools around the country, including in Boulder, CO, Birmingham, AL, and Skokie, IL, to raise funds for our heroic volunteers in Ukraine.
If you held a fundraiser for Ukraine TrustChain that we could feature in our next newsletter, we would love to hear about it.
Spotlight on Karina's Efforts and Ukraine's Children:
Karina is intricately involved in rescuing children and improving their quality of life during the war. Last weekend, Karina’s team of volunteers opened an evacuation center that can house up to 450 civilians. By last Sunday the center already had families moved in, children playing with toys and eating pizza together. The team arranged for two restaurants to feed the evacuees each day. Most refugees at this center stay five nights and move onto the next stage of their journeys; the volunteers prepare the center for the next group of civilians. This weekend, Karina brought in a professional photographer to take pictures of the children at the center for their parents – a bit of joy in the depths of uncertainty and suffering.
Karina’s efforts to support families, mothers, and children this week did not stop there. Karina’s team also ships baby food, diapers, formula, and other essentials to people in need in hard-to-reach places. She also supports several refugee mothers with children in Dnipro whose partners are fighting in the front; she gives the mothers food so they can feed their children. This week, one of the young children was turning two years old. Karina ensured that he, his two older siblings, and his mother would have a special celebration, in spite of war. The mother sent Karina a video thanking her for the chance to purchase a bit of meat and oil, a cake, a toy car, and a warm-up suit for her son’s birthday. At the end of the video, she tells Karina, “you are a gift from God, like a magical fairy for us.”
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.
