November 16, 2022
47,696 people evacuated from danger to date
213 people evacuated this week
Despite the massive attacks this week, we felt that we should highlight the immense joy all of us felt when we received the news of Kherson’s liberation. As one of our volunteers put this, the city was “rejoicing from happiness” even though its residents haven't had water, heating, Internet or electricity for 8 days. Still, the streets of the city were alive and electric, people singing and dancing demonstrating the unyielding proud spirit of the Ukrainian people.
It is important to note that everyone reading this letter contributed to this moment. At the time of the liberation our network supported four volunteer teams within Kherson that continued their heroic work, despite the enormous risks, searches and even a kidnapping by Russian forces. In the three days since liberation, one of our teams managed to deliver aid into the region and three more teams are preparing to go this week. This flexibility is a unique superpower of the Ukrainian volunteer movement.
Giving Season
The Tuesday after Thanksgiving is known as Giving Tuesday, and many organizations and corporations will be holding fundraising drives and end-of-year matching campaigns. As we enter the season of giving, please consider advocating for Ukraine TrustChain at your organization or workplace for such a business-wide fundraiser. Consider, too, starting a personal fundraiser on Facebook for Giving Tuesday. Additionally, if you sign up to make a recurring donation, Facebook will match your contributions. Your continued support is what makes the hopeful news in these letters possible.
Matching for Giving Season begins on November 15, 2022 and goes until December 31, 2022, or until the $7 million match fund is spent. For your donation to be eligible for match, you will need to have set up a recurring donation between November 15, 2022 and December 31, 2022. Meta will only match one donation up to $100.
How matching works:
Meta will match up to $7 million throughout the Giving Season.
Set up recurring donations to an eligible nonprofit anytime between November 15, 2022, and December 31, 2022.
After a second donation is made on your recurring agreement, Meta may match your donation.
Donors will be notified on Facebook if their donation is matched.
Limit of one recurring donation up to $100.
Here is the language about matching donations from Facebook’s website.
One of the volunteers who works with Inna’s foundation tells his incredible story of what it means to him to be a volunteer.
Ukraine Team Milestones
Natalia’s Team
Natalia’s team sent another truck to the Donetsk region last week. Food and sweets came from earlier purchases; warm clothing was donated by Kyiv residents to Natalia’s headquarters; blankets came from the shipment that originally arrived to Odesa from France.
Alena Prezhibolska, Natalia’s close associate, received a large shipment of aid from France earlier this month and is busy distributing it to the areas experiencing greatest need. Alena brought a large shipment of medical equipment and medicine to the intensive care and neurosurgery unit at a Mykolayiv hospital, caring for the most difficult cases from the fierce fighting on the Southern front that led to the liberation of Kherson. This week Alena is planning a trip to Kherson area.
Inna’s Team
Inna’s foundation continues to roll out massive amounts of aid across a vast volunteer network. Last week they provided help to 10,660 families. The first half a ton of aid was delivered to the villages Northeast of Kherson in the newly unoccupied region helping 170 people there. Six tons of aid were distributed to 1,780 families in around Kupyansk in the unoccupied areas around Kharkiv. In total Inna distributed 34.4 tons of aid.
In addition to this relief, thanks to the generous grant from Carry the Future, Inna’s team was able distribute $2,000 worth of diapers to refugee families with children around Dnipro.
Oleksandr’s Team
Oleksandr Davydiuk continues his rigorous work supporting a subnetwork of efficient teams across Ukraine:
After the liberation of Kherson, we were eagerly awaiting word from the teams we have been supporting there. We received only a couple of pictures from them, but they were overwhelmed with joy to be reunited with Ukraine.
To the last day our teams continued to help their people. Oleksiy has been supporting 50 families that he would visit once a month. He could not scale his operations, as volunteers were a regular target for Russian persecution. Nataliya delivered aid to 22 people, although at the time of writing this report, we still hadn’t been able to come into contact with her.
Our ability to connect with the teams remains unstable as the electricity and the Internet are being restored. Oleksii who was more adept at finding cell reception in the city sent us the following message after the Ukrainian army entered the city: The connection is bad now; we don’t have Ukrainian one yet. The Russian cell reception is practically gone — only in one place Dnipro you can still catch it; that’s where I drive to get connected. The city is cheering happily, even though for eight days we haven’t had light, water or heat, but we have ZSU (Ukrainian Armed Forces).
Oleksandr Shnurenko’s group brought aid to the villages on the border of Sumy regions that continue to suffer from regular bombardments.
Angeliya Mobile Clinic traveled to Ukrainka, a small town on the bank of Dnipro River south of Kyiv. The town has a substantial refugee population. The clinic provided 200 medical procedures to 54 people who dropped in for a visit.
Andriy PIlipchuk has delivered 17 tons of aid into Chernivtsi. As we write this report, 70% of this aid is going to Snigurovka - a suburb of Kherson that was in the news last week as the first town taken back by Ukraine in the final push of Kherson offensive. 30% of the aid is going into the frontline villages on the Southern front.
Vladyslav’s team delivered 28 tons of water in Mykolayiv. We are hopeful that the liberation of Kherson will allow Ukraine to restore water supply to the city.
The Lutsk teams continue to travel to Donbas to deliver 80-100 packages to Slovyansk and Torets’k - small towns right in the center of the most vicious battle of this war.
Timur’s Team
Though Timur’s group delivered almost 3,000 total packages of aid this past week, they faced a heart-wrenching delivery to the regions of Balakliya and Izium. During one of the deliveries, they arrived with a large truck of over 1,000 packages of aid, but they were faced with a crowd of over 2,000 people. The situation quickly deteriorated as people began feeling abandoned and frustrated. They thought that an aid truck this large came from the government and yelled that the government was not doing enough to help the people. When it looked like there would not be enough food, people ran out of line and tried to climb into the truck. The volunteers were shaken by this experience, though continued on.
They additionally delivered 400 packages of aid in their neighborhood of Saltivka and Staraya Saltivka. This includes the elderly and individuals with disabilities that rely so much on the team for aid relief.
Pavel’s Team
128 people were evacuated from Mykolayiv and Zaporizhzhya. Most of the team’s effort is currently directed toward the delivery of humanitarian aid as the evacuation routes have for now slowed down, particularly in the Zaporizhzhya direction.
So far in November, Pavel’s team has fed 15,003 people — roughly 7,500 each week in Mykolayiv and the surrounding areas. In the village of Bavovne, in addition to food, our team provided 200 blankets and an electric generator to outfit a warming center there. We received a truck of potbelly stoves as the first preparation in a major winter-oriented project to outfit warming centers and winterize homes.
Another major project that saw progress this week was the distribution of generators. So far Pavel found efficient applications for 18 generators, which supported critical operations, such as ensuring functioning local water supplies, powering water tower pumps and University IT infrastructure. Other generators supported municipal rescue teams that require stable sources of power for search and rescue missions and particularly damaged villages where these generators help hundreds of residents. Two of the generators are currently supporting bomb shelters in the territories that became occupied by the enemy since the delivery.
Dina’s Team
Last week, Dina helped 2,131 families across 4 stationary locations. Additionally, she shipped 400 parcels to refugee families with children. Roughly 400 packages were delivered into the de-occupied zones, with food mostly donated by local organizations, with UTC supporting the delivery of hygienic products, candles and matches. Dina received 100 more newly produced warm quilts that will be heading to the Donetsk region this week. We are exploring ways to increase production.
Earlier this week Dina traveled to Kyiv region prospecting an orphanage she is planning to support. Thanks to the continued support from Vostok-SOS, Dina’s team is preparing additional shipments into the unoccupied zones this week.
As the winter cold sets in, there are new challenges, such as finding warm, rent-free spaces to distribute aid. Dina was able to identify a suitable location in Kremenchuk, and is looking for backup options in other cities, where landlords’ patience is growing thin due to the strain of dealing with hundreds of exhausted people that come to receive aid.
Karina’s Team
Through Karina’s NGO we continue to provide targeted logistics support to evacuation missions. Her team evacuated 67 people this week from Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar and supported 18 medical evacuations in the Kherson region, which included helping 9 children. Kherson residents being transported to hospitals suffered serious injuries and medical issues such as shrapnel wounds, improper fusion of limbs after injury, heart issues, and severe asthma. Additionally, 174 food packages were delivered to Kherson already, as Karina reorients her work to include this important new direction.
Meanwhile, 108 people are living in Karina’s shelter. Last week shelter residents came together to repair and repaint the facilities to keep them clean and orderly and the children happy.
Tetiana’s Team
Tetiana’s group distributed aid in the Zhabotyn and Mykolaiv regions; in total 68 aid packages were given out. Everyone was very grateful for the aid. When the director of the village boarding school heard that volunteers had arrived in the village, he came and asked for help for the school. The first thing that he asked for was candy and dumplings for the children – the delicacies they most dream about but that are not available. He also requested grain, school supplies, and cleaning and hygiene products.
Andriy’s Team
129 people continue to live in shelters established by Andriy's charity Pomahaem. Last week, Andriy received and prepared for the distribution of 600 warm clothing sets to the children and adolescents from underserved refugee families. His team also traveled to Dnipro villages supporting refugee families with kids with a large aid package designed to last them a month.
Kseniia’s Team
If you explore the Livyj Bereh Instagram, you will see a whole series of beautiful posts about the traditional village homes Kseniia’s team has been repairing since May. The repairs had been completed earlier and the residents of these homes are now properly sheltered for the winter, but we continue to relish this work through Kseniia’s meticulous posts about each of these repair projects Ukraine TrustChain supported.
In the meantime, Kseniia travelled to the Kharkiv region where the devastation after Russian withdrawal is even greater than it was in the Kyiv region. Kseniia is making plans to extend her work to Kharkiv villages.
Meanwhile, the team in Kherson we supported through Kseniia was also liberated. We are still waiting to hear from them to understand the needs within the city better as we plan our next steps.
How to Help
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