September 28, 2022
44,744 people evacuated from danger to date
448 people evacuated this week
Our governance committee had to make the tough decision and reduce the recurring funds going to the teams we support by about 20%. This is a temporary measure that was necessary to ensure that teams will have predictable funding going forward while we continue to fundraise and engage private and institutional donors.
We are grateful for everybody who has stepped up and offered help in the last two weeks. This really helped us stabilize the reserves. We want to ensure that our trusted teams continue to operate across the frontlines as it is impossible to predict where the need will emerge in the coming weeks due to the escalating brutality of the Ruscist aggressors.
Ukraine Team Milestones
Last Sunday, Natalia came back from a visit to Donbass. She did not stay put for long though, and a day later on Tuesday, she loaded two vans and a trailer and went to Balakliya. Although it takes close to 8 hours to drive there, the total cost of the fuel for the drive is roughly $400. The delivery was well worth the money – it became immediately apparent when Natalia arrived. She hadn’t seen this level of desperation since the first trips into the liberated areas of Kyiv back in April.
Here is how Natalia described it:
People kissed the bread and cried. We came to the square where we saw people. There weren't many, but as soon as we started distributing food packages, in 15 minutes there were more than 500. Our two vans and a trailer held only 400 packages up to 25 pounds each. We panicked that we won't have enough for all of them... And we didn't. Thank god, we had 700 loaves of bread, and there was enough of it for everyone.
As we talked with Natalia, these distributions weren’t only heartbreaking, but still dangerous, since the liberated territories continue to have substantial presence of pro-Russian forces that can commit terrorist acts or call in a bombardment. In these cases, close coordination with Ukrainian troops and well-thought out processes are essential to ensure the safety of people receiving the long-awaited help.
Inna Kampen’s group continued operating at scale. They have distributed 35.2 tons of aid to 7,900 people. 10 tons of aid went into the Kharkiv area; 3.3 tons were delivered into the recently unoccupied area to the villages of Artemovka and Velykyi Burluk. 1.5 tons were delivered to the residents of Nikopol, a town that sits across the Dnieper River from Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant and continues.
Timur and his team swiftly answered the call to mobilize aid to newly liberated areas like Izium and Kupiansk. Last week, they delivered over 2,000 packages of aid as well as 1,200 candles and boxes of diapers and hygiene items. The need there is greater than we imagined and, upon replenishment of our supplies, they plan to continue the aid drops in various villages of the front lines. At the home base, over 180 packages were delivered to Saltivka addresses; these consist of bedridden seniors and families with small children.
Pavel’s team continued running evacuations primarily from Mykolayiv and Zaporizhzhya. Pavel’s team evacuated 440 people including 140 children. In addition to evacuations, Pavel’s team delivers significant amounts of humanitarian aid. Last week they fed 4,760 people in Mykolayiv region, and the total so far in September stands at 15,970 people. Ukraine TrustChain supports the transportation and expenses needed to distribute this aid. The aid itself comes from other humanitarian aid providers, such as We Stand with Ukraine and Samaritan’s Purse. As we write this report Pavel is heading to Europe to raise awareness of the situation in Ukraine, share his experience, and negotiate with European organizations shipping aid to Ukraine. His team is also preparing further trips into the gray zones of the war in the coming weeks.
Ukraine TrustChain helped fund an important targeted initiative by Andriy’s charitable foundation, which provided help to 220 families with children with special needs in Dnipro. The packages that Andriy’s team puts together for families are encompassing, able to sustain a family for more than a month.
In the meantime, Andriy’s shelters continued to house 151 people. 8 more people were evacuated to Austria bringing the total number his team helped move to the west to 1,966 people.
As you might have read in an earlier UTC newsletter or media post, Andriy’s team collaborates closely with the team of Dr. Clown - a wonderful group that uses clowning to cheer up people in the shelters and hospitals. Recently, a local Dnipro hospital has provided our clowns with an office within the hospital to store supplies and work on their clown magic.
Oleksandr continues to coordinate a network of volunteer organizations with extreme care and attention to details and expense:
Pavel Vystratenko’s group continues their daring missions. Their group shipped 2.6 tons of aid to the most problematic areas of the Eastern front: Slovyansk, Kramatrosk, and Pokrovsk.
Angelia Clinic visited Fastiv, a small town southwest of Kyiv. There, the doctors provided help to 66 people. If you follow this newsletter, you might notice that each week a different mix of doctors goes on the road with this mobile clinic. This time a dentist was part of team, which was extremely helpful, as a number of people had serious problems with teeth that they would not be able to address if it were not for the specialist brought in by the clinic.
Mykolayiv teams continue their hard work bringing in 38 tons of drinking water weekly in larger plastic barrels.
Medical aid that Oksana Kuharchuk brought to Lutsk from Warsaw last week was redirected to the hospitals in Dnipro and Zaporizhzhya. Some of the aid was distributed to refugees in Vinnitsa and Dnipro.
Oleksand Zhalovaga continues his selfless work with children from refugee families in Lutsk, providing art-therapy based rehabilitation services to children from Bucha, Severodonetsk, Mariupol and other cities, where Ukrainian children had to live through unthinkable trauma.
Earlier in the week Serhiy from Dina’s team headed back to the recently liberated Kupiansk to distribute the aid there. There were distributions in the Kharkiv region in the villages of Guty, Royakivka, Merefa, and other centers where Dina’s team operates (Kremenchuk, Poltava, and Krasnokutsk). Overall, Dina’s team distributed help to 1,560 families, despite a number of people on her team in Dnipro being sick this week.
Meanwhile Dina is working actively collecting clothing, blankets and other aid that she is planning to take to Kupiansk next week. For a few families, Dina bought radiators and firewood in preparation for the winter. Although UTC funds couldn’t be used for this, Dina’s team collected enough donations from her supporters to buy a truck for national guard units fighting on the frontlines in the Kharkiv region.
This week Tetiana's team bought and distributed 70 packages of aid in Smila. One of the people who signed up for help got lost and went to the wrong side of town, so Tetiana and her husband had to figure out where the person ended up and drove to find her. Tetiana also assembled and sent out 7 more packages to families in need living further away.
Kseniia and her team returned to Ukraine after traveling to Germany to fundraise for the army. The donations you provided continued to support her Kharkiv teams and provide help in the suffering occupied territories in the Kherson region.
US Team Milestones
Between September 18th and 20th, the Ukraine TrustChain US-based leadership attended the Ukraine Action Summit in Washington DC. We joined over 30 other organizations in advocating for Ukraine. Our leadership met with multiple members of congress as well as the US State Department. We shared stories from the ground as well as videos and photos. Members of congress were particularly moved when we gave them a photo of young children collecting shrapnel from bombs that destroyed their village and Members of congress were particularly moved when we gave them a photo of young children collecting shrapnel from bombs that destroyed their village and showed them this very shrapnel we had brought. We also networked with a number of organizations working to help Ukraine to coordinate our efforts and save lives on the ground.
Women’s Networks at three international banks - Natixis, Scotiabank and Société Générale – held a fundraiser to support Ukraine TrustChain at The Globe in NYC on September 20, 2022. This fundraiser has raised several thousand dollars to support volunteer teams in Ukraine. Two key members of our US-based team attended the fundraiser in NYC and shared some of the stories we receive daily from the volunteers. While the event took place last week, the donations keep coming, including at least 2 of the banks offering to match their employees’ donations. Thank you to Brittany Salese, Chelsea McCune, and Muriel Kalifa who organized the fundraiser for all of their efforts to support Ukraine TrustChain volunteers.
How to Help
Donate - The money goes directly to teams providing aid on the ground, who respond dynamically to the most urgent needs.
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