November 2, 2022
47,360 people evacuated from danger to date
259 people evacuated this week
Rereading our letters from previous weeks, you can see how key themes in volunteer work appear and grow over time. The situation with electricity in larger cities continues to deteriorate affecting the lives of our volunteers. This week, water supply was limited in Kyiv and Dnipro, although city services are making steady progress on restoring normal operations. Despite these difficulties and ongoing bombings that happen almost on schedule, our volunteers continue to push aid into the areas of desperate need and teams have now shifted to various winterization tasks for fixing up roofs to providing stoves and blankets. Our evacuations were lower this week due to the unexpected pause on the Zaporizhzhya route, but they were compensated by substantially higher deliveries.
We are looking for ways to ascertain grant funding, but our operations are currently 100% funded by your generous donations. As the end of the year approaches, we ask that you help promote donations to Ukraine TrustChain within your workplaces by nominating UTC as the charitable organization of choice or working with your employer to include UTC on the list of potential recipients. Additionally, PayPal now allows you to set Ukraine TrustChain as a preferred charity; PayPal adds a $1 donation to your charity of choice with every purchase.
Ukraine Team Milestones
Inna’s Team
Inna Kampen’s group provided help to 18,310 families and individuals. More than half of it went into the unoccupied Kharkiv territories where a large 20-ton truck and 4 minivans went back and forth throughout the week to deliver aid. The food situation in many of the unoccupied areas remains desperate, so Inna’s group specializes in the simplest form of help possible delivering free bread and canned goods. More than 800 people receiving this aid were in the most dangerous so called “red zones” - areas actively contested by Russian forces and defended by the Ukrainian army.
Inna’s group is mostly run by volunteers who are themselves refugees with a deep understanding of the life of people they help, and direct their pain and suffering to helping others.
Inna shares some of their stories with us. One of these people is Valentyna. Five years ago Valentyna lost her daughter. Two years ago she lost her son. A year ago - her husband died. Now - the war started. Valentyna said that if it wasn’t for volunteer work, her life would have no meaning; she spends all her time at the volunteer center, cooking and distributing food.
Oleksandr’s Team
Thanks to careful management by Oleksandr Davydiuk, we continue to support a subnetwork of efficient teams with optimized and targeted investments:
Team of O. Shnurenko delivered 10 tons of aid to 1,200 families living in Northeast Ukraine. The villages of Krasnopillia and Bilopillia had been unoccupied in the spring but continue to suffer from Russian artillery since these villages are located only a few miles away from the Russian border. 15% of this delivery was provided by local volunteers in Sumy, according to Shnurenko’s reports.
Yuriy S. successfully made his way to Siversk, a city that famously stopped the enemy advance from Lysychansk during the summer. Here is his report: “This time we drove through Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, but our main goal were people in Siversk. There are people there that live in basements, they are mostly elderly that have nowhere to go. They have neither light nor water, no opportunities to purchase food or medication, as nothing works there.” Yuriy delivered 1800 kg of food there. On the way back, they managed to evacuate a mother with her three kids, two of them had severe health problems suffering from epilepsy and severe CP.
Vladyslav’s team delivered and distributed 39 more tons of drinking water in Mykolayiv.
Oleksandr Zhalovaga continued his work with refugee children in Lutsk through ceramics and pottery classes, despite frequent blackouts after the strikes on Lutsk earlier this month. For the first time last week, Oleksandr brought his art therapy classes to work with children with cancer at a local hospital.
270 refugee families received aid in Odesa and Lutsk.
Two teams continue to find incredible loopholes to support small groups of people in the occupied Kherson as the Russians continue to terrorize the city in preparation for the Ukrainian offensive.
Timur’s Team
It has been a cold and brutal week for Timur and team. They don't stop, however, packing, sorting and delivering hundreds of packages of aid. Some of the aid went to their regular addresses around the hardest hit areas of Kharkiv. Many residents there are bedridden seniors with no family members nearby. The team made two trips to areas of Kupiansk and Tsyrkuny delivering 500 packages there, braving mine-riddled roads and blown up bridges. Their vehicles sustained some damage after those trips so the team spent the rest of the week on local deliveries, waiting for repairs.
Natalia’s Team
Like with other teams in Kyiv, Natalia was affected by the strikes on civilian infrastructure. Electricity kept going in and out, water supply was cut off in many parts of Kyiv, the internet connections were unstable as well - all of this due to continuing terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure by Russian forces. Despite these difficulties, Natalia and Iryna Yablunovska shipped aid to a hospital near the Eastern frontline and prepared a truck of aid that headed to Bahmut. Fortunately (in our opinion), Natalia did not have sufficient accreditation to take the cargo into the Bahmut battle zone personally, as the area is deemed too dangerous for civilian volunteers. As we are writing this report, Natalia is heading out to the Ukrainian-controlled city of Lyman in the unoccupied parts of Kharkiv Region.
Alena, who runs a volunteer team in Odesa in coordination with Natalia, has just completed official NGO registration. Last week they received a shipment of humanitarian aid from France that they are preparing to ship into the Ukrainian-controlled territories of the Kherson and Mykolayiv regions next week.
Pavel’s Team
By Thursday, Pavel’s group evacuated 185 people including 53 children. The attack on Zaporizhzhya became more vicious, however, and the trickle of people escaping occupied territories through Zaporizhzhya as a result halted. Pavel’s team then used the other 3 days to push a massive amount of aid and distribute it strategically among their warehouses. 10 tons of aid arrived from Europe last week that will be distributed in Mykolayiv and its vicinity. Aid was delivered to the towns of Katelva and Kryvii Rih. A truck of supplies was delivered to an oncology center, including 1.5 tons of medicine received from Europe (we didn’t confirm the location of the facility at the time of writing this report).
Dina’s Team
Dina provided help to 1,553 families. Her team took three daring trips into the unoccupied towns of Izium, Kupiansk, and Lyman. Serhiy from Dina’s team recorded harrowing footage from the Lyman visit showing utter devastation and desperate conditions for residents remaining in the city. Power in those areas is unlikely to be restored for weeks if not months, and as a result some of the most important and coveted items are matches, candles and basic hygienic products (pads, soap). These inexpensive supplies make a huge difference, provided someone is willing to travel into the affected areas. In the liberated areas of the East, volunteers are the only sources of aid reaching local residents at scale.
Dina’s other groups continued their selfless efforts in procuring, administrating and distributing aid to refugees based in Dnipro, Poltava, and Kremenchuk. Dina continues to work with a local blanket manufacturer in Kharkiv who, despite power outages, supplies 100 blankets a week at just $6-$7 a piece.
School in Lyman
Karina’s Team
This week Karina celebrated her birthday. We have been in frequent communication with Karina, as her city of Dnipro also suffered from Russian attacks, with one of its main power plants destroyed by enemy rockets. Despite the frequent airstrikes, Karina continued on her mission. Last week her vehicles evacuated 69 people from Bahmut and nearby town of Druzhkivka - towns burning from the heaviest fighting of the entire frontline. They’ve delivered aid to 78 people in the rural areas around Dnipro. 98 refugees continue to live in the shelter organized by her team. In addition to normal weekly activity, last week Karina’s team kicked off the winter preparation projects, ordering potbelly stoves and blankets to keep people warm during the winter.
Tetiana’s Team
This week, marked by disruptions in electricity supply and mobile communications, Tetiana's team distributed help to 43 internally displaced refugees housed in a local kindergarten. The team also sent 12 packages to refugees living in various villages in the Cherkassky region.
Andriy’s Team
152 people continue to live in Andiry’s two shelters. Shelters run by Andriy’s team Pomahaem provide its inhabitants access to professional medical and psychological services, as well as to social programs.
Meanwhile, Andriy’s warehouse distributed comprehensive aid packages to 240 refugee families within Dnipro, and sent another 165 to qualifying families across Ukraine.
Kseniia’s Team
Late last weekend Kseniia came back from aid delivery to Kharkiv. There the Kharkiv branch of her team headed by Daria continues to distribute aid. Another team continued their work in the occupied Kherson.
How to Help
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