Vadym Stolar: The mission of charity during the war is to preserve the Ukrainian nation
Vadym Stolar: The mission of charity during the war is to preserve the Ukrainian nation
A full-scale war has been going on for 1000 days. The enemy has been trampling Ukrainian land, destroying our cities and villages, killing people for 1000 days. Not only military personnel, but also civilians: men, women, children.
These 1000 days have seriously united and mobilized Ukrainians. Almost all of us help the military and civilians in one way or another. We volunteer, donate, whoever can: ten hryvnias, hundred, thousand, million. And those who can even more have launched their own charitable foundations.
One of these was The Vadym Stolar Charitable Foundation , established in early 2020 to help Ukrainians during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Foundation quickly directed its efforts after February 24, 2022 to support residents of frontline and later liberated territories, internally displaced persons, and also focused on helping the military.
The Fund provided assistance worth 681 million hryvnias during the 1,000 days of the war. At the same time, more than 162 million hryvnias was directed to support other charitable foundations, public organizations, a grant program, social projects for civilians and the military, as well as donations.
The Foundation adjusted its priorities and strategy three times during the full-scale war.
Initially, volunteers undertook any support and any assistance, from hot meals and delivering medicines to organizing evacuations.
“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 Vadym Stolar Foundation team focused on the efficiency and organization of systemic activities. The main directions and projects were identified. In particular, two main directions began to operate within the framework of assistance to civilians: direct food assistance 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 comprehensive project “++ for the Armed Forces of Ukraine”. It includes more than a dozen different areas: from supply of ammunition and equipment to transfer of border strip development tools and high-tech equipment. Moreover, requests are constantly changing, and the Fund 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 discussed the global mission and strategic goals of the Foundation once again. It was concluded that if the mission of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is to preserve 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 of Ukraine” project provides systemic support to the military and helps them maintain Ukraine’s independence. In total, the Foundation has transferred to the defenders more than 50 thousand units of military equipment, tools and clothing since the beginning of the full-scale russian invasion, 900 units of high-tech equipment, such as reconnaissance and strike quadcopters, anti-drone systems, electronic warfare systems, as well as 85 units of specialized automotive equipment.
Humanitarian missions are designed to unite different corners of our Motherland with assistance and support Ukrainians affected by the war. The Fund has carried out humanitarian missions to various regions of Ukraine since the beginning of large-scale aggression, namely Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih, Ternopil, Zaporizhia, Chernihiv, Donbas hot spots and places of residence of internally displaced persons in western Ukraine.
A large-scale direction of the Fund's work is psycho-emotional support for people affected by the war. And the flagship of this direction is the project "Renew".
“We have been providing psychological and emotional support at "Renew" since 2022 to families with children whose parents died, were captured, or went missing. As well as to families who were left without a home. We recently expanded the project and invited people who suffered from russian air attacks, those whose relatives died or were seriously injured, as well as those who lost their homes to participate in it. Each " Renew " event takes place in picturesque and relatively safe corners of the country. Specialists like psychologists, art therapists, and animators work with parents and children. Concerts and performances, goes on hikes are being organized all together. The goal of the project is to give a psychological reset to those who are having the hardest time”, Natalia Prykhodko noted.
Also, the Foundation has been implementing the "Support" project since the fall of 2022, which includes a number of initiatives. Namely, the "Resilience" course, aimed at psychological support for families of Ukrainian military personnel. The "About Children - for Mothers" course, which helps to understand and raise children and adolescents. The "Psycho work" course, which provides practical skills for supporting and providing first psychological aid to those around them. Psychological support groups operate within the project also.
The Foundation also takes care of the physical health of Ukrainians, organizing free check-ups and implementing various sports projects periodically.
. In addition, The Vadym Stolar Foundation is actively developing cooperation with other organizations to more effectively organize assistance to people. Thus, a competition for participation in the third program “Grant for an Important Cause” has recently started. Charitable and public organizations that care for physical and psychological recovery of Ukrainian military personnel and citizens in war conditions have the opportunity to receive a targeted non-refundable payment from the general fund of 1,000,000 hryvnias within the framework of the programs. The main direction of the third stage of the grant program was the creation and equipping of offices for providing psychological assistance and physical rehabilitation to military personnel participating in combat operations. In addition, initiatives for employment and social integration of military personnel will be financed.
A special place in the Foundation's activities is occupied by the publication and promotion of the book "Stories of the Strong", with the help of which the team realizes its mission to preserve national memory. These are difficult memories of real people about their own experience of living the first days of the war, occupation, captivity, shelling, which are important to preserve for future generations. This is truth about the bloody war that is still ongoing, and the facts of the crimes of the occupation army, the perpetrators of which must be punished. The book has already been published, its theatrical presentations took place both in Ukraine, in Bucha and Odesa, and abroad, in Warsaw and Brussels.
“Both I personally and the entire team of our Foundation clearly understand our global mission during this terrible war, we must help to preserve the Ukrainian nation. Therefore, we are constantly expanding the geography and scale of our support to both civilians and the military. And we intend to continue to do so as long as necessary”, Vadym Stolar concluded.
