The mission of charity during the war is to preserve the Ukrainian nation
Vadim Stolar: The mission of charity during the war is to preserve the Ukrainian nation
A full-scale war has been going on for 1035 days. For 1,035 days, the enemy tramples Ukrainian land, destroys our cities and villages, and kills people. Not only military, but also civilians - men, women, children.
These 1035 days seriously united and mobilized Ukrainians. Almost all of us help the military and civilians in one way or another. We volunteer, donate as much as we can: ten hryvnias, a hundred, a thousand, a million. And those who can do even more have launched their own charitable funds.
One of them was the Vadym Stolar Charitable Fund, created at the beginning of 2020 to help Ukrainians during the Covid-19 pandemic. After February 24, 2022, the Fund quickly directed its efforts to support residents of the front-line and later liberated territories, forcibly displaced people, and also focused on helping the military.
During the 1,035 days of the war, the Fund provided a total of 687 million hryvnias of aid. At the same time, more than 168 million hryvnias were directed to support other charitable funds, public organizations, a grant program, social projects for civilians and military personnel, as well as donations.
During the full-scale war, the Foundation adjusted its priorities and its strategy three times.
At first, volunteers took on any kind of support and any kind of help - from hot meals and delivery of medicines to the organization of evacuation.
“We tried to respond to the challenges that faced the state and people at a specific moment from the beginning. For example, there was a great need for hot food at the beginning of March 2022. We had to feed Kyiv residents who were left without a means of livelihood, displaced persons who flocked to the capital. And, of course, our defenders who stood guard over Kyiv. We were able to find people quickly who know how to cook, agree on the purchase of products, organize a kitchen and establish the process of preparing and delivering ready-made food. And all this at a time when Kyiv was under shelling, when we had to go for products to warehouses practically under bullets”, a volunteer of the Foundation Nataliia Prykhodko said. “When the military saw that our Foundation was active and doing a lot, they began to contact us about ammunition. And I could never have thought that as a mother of three children and a lawyer by education, I would start to understand the classes of bulletproof vests, types of thermal imagers, etc.”.
Over time, the team of the Vadym Stolar Foundation focused on the efficiency and organization of system activities. The main directions and projects were defined. In particular, within the scope of aid to civilians, two main directions began to operate: direct food aid and provision of psycho-emotional support, which include a number of projects and programs.
At the same time, assistance to the military is implemented in the complex project "++ for the Armed Forces". It contains more than a dozen different directions: from the supply of ammunition and equipment to the transfer of means of arranging border strips and high-tech equipment. Moreover, requests are constantly changing - and the Foundation adjusts its programs accordingly.
“We continue to transfer ammunition, equipment and vehicles to the needs of the front, but the military’s requests are increasingly shifting towards high-tech equipment. Moreover, these requests are also changing. If at first the most needed were drones-observers that help conduct reconnaissance and guide artillery, then later, when the enemy himself mastered such equipment, they began to more often ask for – and receive from us – systems to combat enemy UAVs. Today, perhaps the main request from our fighters is for FPV kamikaze drones”, director of the Foundation Andrii Feshchenko said.
And this year, while maintaining a systematic approach, main directions and projects, the team thought about the more distant future and once again discussed the global mission and strategic goals of the Foundation. They came to the conclusion that if the mission of the Armed Forces is to preserve the independence of Ukraine, then the mission of charitable organizations and volunteers is to preserve Ukrainians, the Ukrainian nation.
This is how this mission is implemented through the projects of the Vadym Stolar Foundation.
The "++ for the Armed Forces" project provides systematic support to the military and helps them preserve the independence of Ukraine. In total, since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, the Fund has handed over more than 51,000 units of military equipment, tools and clothing, 1,240 units of high-tech equipment, such as reconnaissance and shock quadcopters, anti-drone systems, EW systems, as well as 85 units of specialized automotive equipment.
Humanitarian missions are designed to unite different parts of our Motherland and support Ukrainians affected by the war. Since the beginning of the large-scale aggression, the Foundation has carried out humanitarian missions to various regions of Ukraine, namely to Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih, Ternopil, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, hot spots in Donbas and places of residence of forcibly displaced persons in the west of Ukraine.
The large-scale direction of the Foundation's work is psycho-emotional support for people affected by the war. And the flagship of this direction is the "Renew" project.
Also, starting in the fall of 2022, the Foundation will implement the "Support" project, which includes a number of initiatives. Namely, the course "Resilience", aimed at psychological support of families of Ukrainian servicemen. The course "About children - for mothers", which helps to understand and raise children and teenagers. The course "Psychodia", which gives practical skills to support and provide psychological first aid to those around. Psychological support groups also operate within the project.
The Foundation also takes care of the physical health of Ukrainians, periodically organizing free check-ups and implementing various sports projects.
In addition, the Vadym Stolar Foundation actively develops cooperation with other organizations for more effective organization of assistance to people. Thus, the competition for participation in the third "Grant for an important cause" program has recently started. Within the framework of the programs, charitable and public organizations that take care of the physical and psychological recovery of Ukrainian military personnel and citizens in wartime conditions can receive a targeted non-refundable payment from the general fund in the amount of 1,000,000 hryvnias. The main direction of the third stage of the grant program was the creation and equipping of offices for the provision of psychological assistance and physical rehabilitation to servicemen participating in hostilities. In addition, initiatives for the employment and social integration of the military will be financed.
A separate place in the activities of the Foundation is the publication and promotion of the book "Stories of the Strong", with the help of which the team realizes its mission of preserving national memory. These are painful memories of real people about their own experience of the first days of the war, occupation, captivity, shelling, which are important to preserve for future generations. This is the truth about the bloody war that is still going on and the facts of the crimes of the occupying army, the guilty of which must be punished. The book has already been published, its theatrical presentations took place both in Ukraine - in Buch and Odesa, and abroad - in Warsaw and Brussels.
