This is United Ukraine co-founder Adam with the latest mid-week update on where your donations have helped the most. Since our last update to you, we’ve distributed an additional $4,394.26 throughout the country, feeding families and supplying local leaders with the equipment they need.
Six months into the war, millions of children have been displaced inside Ukraine. Their parents are often employed at critical jobs, in hospitals or with the military, but the immediate theaters of war are no place for children. As a result, these kids are taking refuge in institutions away from conflict areas while their parents stay behind. The UN currently estimates that more than two-thirds of all Ukrainian children have had to leave their homes and parents at some point during the war. Our local partners and volunteers are here for those kids; delivering food, diapers and more (apple sauces are a big favorite right now) at the pop-up shelters that have appeared all over the country. We’re glad to report that we’re doing our part for these children whose home lives have become casualties of war.
You can keep our activities going - and keep those kids in plenty of applesauce - by supporting our work. As always, every penny donated goes directly into Ukraine. Nathan and I cover all transaction fees associated with this work personally. We’ve kept that promise for six months, and have no intention of breaking it in the future. The best ways to contribute are:
Via Debit, Credit, or Paypal: At this link
Via Venmo: @UnitedUkraine (under the business tab)
Our Website: http://www.united-ukraine.org
And we accept checks via mail at:
225 Bright Poppy
Irvine, CA 92618
If you can’t help directly, the next best thing is simply telling your friends what we’re doing. Our rate of repeat giving is very high because the impact of what we do with the resources we have is apparent. Sending your friends one of our updates helps us grow more than you can imagine.
This week, we also continued working with our contacts in southern Ukraine, where fighting is currently reaching new levels of intensity while Ukraine seeks to liberate the occupied city of Kherson, to source and procure lightweight mobile power generation devices.
These components are critical for operations in Southern Ukraine because they power mobile hospital tents and communications networks that keep people alive in the field. Russian forces target field hospitals once they discover their location. Consequently, all hospital tents move two to three times a week so that the injured and the ill are not a stationary target. Each tent, including ventilation and lighting, needs to be constructable and deconstructable in less than three hours to maintain that pace. These solar cells make it possible to meet those specifications while powering the medical care that people need near the front lines.
And, of course, our efforts this week also included direct support so that we can keep families together in the first place. This week that included Daria, 22, and Vanya, 2, from a village near Nikolaev that has been particularly hard hit by Russian shelling.
And Alla’s entire family from Mariupol, including her husband, mom, and her two very special cats “Milka” and “Marcus.”
Alla really wanted to tell all of you how much she appreciates the opportunity to keep her whole family together, especially those cats. Milka and Marcus are the last gifts her father gave her before he died several years ago, so she couldn’t bear to leave her pets behind. It would have been like losing the memories of her father too. During the siege of Mariupol, Alla and her husband lived in squalid conditions - under bridges and in stairwells - and had to move often as each new shelter came under fire. Throughout it all, she transported Milka and Marcus with her in a laundry basket. Eventually, they got used to it. Cats are the best.
With your help and support, Alla’s family - her whole family - stayed together. They are currently safe in an area near Kremenchuk.
As always, these are just a few of the people and we’ve been in contact with lately. The need is gigantic, and we’ve talked to more people that we can even count at this point. All of them are grateful for the love and support that your donations have given them.
This week actually marks the four year anniversary of my first trip to Kyiv - a journey I undertook almost impulsively just to test how much Russian I’d manage to teach myself to that point. At the time, I actually regarded going to Ukraine as a “consolation prize” because I couldn’t obtain a Russian visa quickly enough to meet my schedule. It was a lifechanging experience for me.
Over the course of a week I uncovered a place and a people that inspired me at every turn. I still remember the feeling of the air on my skin, and the goosebumps it provoked, when I saw Kyiv’s churches perfectly haloed by the setting summer sun. It started to feel as if I was briefly in the presence of God.
Four years later we’re here, and for me this work honors that feeling of finding home in a place I’d never been before. Thank you for helping a place that means so much to me. I can’t ever truly convey how much I appreciate it.
As always, with love,
Adam