On the 45th day of the war, it fell down from the top position in one of my national newspapers. Some articles over a domestic scandal was at top, but then two insignificant articles and some commercials before the news on Ukraine. On a similar note, it's getting harder to source donations for humanitarian aid. Earlier "we" would get food thrown after us for delivery to Ukraine, now ... not so much. Ukraine asks for "weapons, weapons, weapons", that's beyond what we can help with (and if the mission is "humanitarian aid", it's also beyond what we should help with), but from what JJ tells food is also desperately needed. He's focusing on one village west of Kyiv, people are queuing up and crying when they come with food donations. There will be a need for food aid for a long time to come. It's sort of ironic, since Ukraine in normal times is a big food exporter. Currently, probably more than half of the population is either displaced, serving in the army, busy with other work related to the war. Supply chains have become broken. The normal economic system breaks down under such circumstances. We can only hope that a significant amount of farmers will stay on their post and do their work - and have sufficient of supplies to do their job.
Perhaps we're also a bit exhausted. JJ and me haven't done any volunteer work during the last few days, we've been going for a small hike and been working with other projects the last days. To our defense, we can't do much as we don't have a car. We've already sent two cars to Ukraine, we don't have the budget for a third car (most of the rest of the budget has been spent on fuel and food), the guy with the BMW has left for work in Norway. From JJ's place there is an hour of hike through some very muddy trails to the nearest regular bus stop. One mission came up on the radar - one Ukrainian family that got a place to stay far east in Poland had a mission to go to an embassy in Warsaw, so JJ suggested to start by taking a taxi, then rent a car, drive for some hours to pick up those people, drive them all the way to the embassy (quite much of the way going parallel to the train line) and then all the way back again - totally the trip would take perhaps 15 hours. Cost efficient? Not at all! Even if we had been with a car and staying right nearby this family, I would have insisted to drive them only to the train station. Operating a free taxi service in Poland is nice, but perhaps bit outside the "humanitarian aid" mandate. The other mission was to go and buy more food (partly from "our" budget, partly from another budget) and deliver it to a storage so that other people could drive it to Ukraine - which may also be difficult when not having a car. I've applied for a new passport so that I can enter Ukraine, but it's not ready yet (and due to supply chain problems, there are delays on the passport production line).
On day 45, there was also a "Stand Up for Ukraine" conference in Warszawa. Coincidentally we also had a meeting in Warszawa that day - JJ thought it would be a "business-style" meeting (discussing how to spend aid money in the best possible way), but it actually appeared to be a party - we got a bit surprised. Well, exhausted volunteers also need to chill out sometimes, it's good for the motivation.
Helping from the grassroots effort like this is more important than all of the big huge corporate scams used to generate funds.
I'd rather support small people like you who are taking action to help others in the midst of this insane conflict.
Keep up your hard work! The community and the world sees what you're doing.
If you could also source and verify other means that the world could support you guys as well as other real charitable organizations on the ground helping to provide food...
The entire community would definitely love all that information.
I am sure that the crazy scams are taking away vital assistance from those most needing help.
I'm sending up prayers for peace.
It is said that in many shops in Ukraine now it's only possible to buy Polish food. That begs a question - was this food that is sold in the shops actually come from food donations, that were supposed to go for free to people in need? As previously mentioned, also the border guards tends to pillage from the donations. There are many strange things going on in the "charity market".
I've now seen video greetings and photographs of food donated from "our" budget (that is, the money I donated and the money I got from my friends for the "project minibus"), and I also trust the people in the chain, so I know my efforts and the money in our budget has come to good use. And no, the party was definitely not paid for by "our" budget :-)
Keep showing the world your hard work and we will recognize it and be able to help out and support more.
Providing that direct proof sets honest fundraising apart from the scams.
You guys are doing phenomenal and I can't wait to see more of your hard work.
Hopefully you can support others.
One of the main things that we learned during disaster relief was is that you take in donations and set up kitchens and cook people food and ration out what you're giving out as hot meals.
Quite a few of the individuals that I knew would just survive by going to these disaster zones here in the United States and they would cook dinners while putting out a donation bucket.
If you work hard people will donate and you show them the direct results of helping? It is truly phenomenal.
I wish you many blessings and a lot of success in your hard work to help others.
If you another groups that are good solid community organizations need help optimizing your accounts as well as ideas in organization together to help each other out here on the blockchain as well....
Please let me know.
I also believe that serving hot meals may be one of the better options. It's slightly more social and fun to eat together with other people rather than that each family takes home a box of food. If done in a good way, it may prevent food from being resold, it may give more "calories for the buck" as one can buy discounted food in big packages, and if done right less food may be wasted.
On a related note, we have some places in Oslo where it's possible to get food for free - it's meant to be an offer for homeless, but I suppose anyone can just come and say "I'm hungry, can I have some food please?". Some years ago we had a guest living with us for maybe two weeks - I think he he was Ukrainian, a tourist that came with empty pockets. He considered it to be a good idea to "pay back" for the hospitality by bringing food for us from that place. Unfortunately we were not quite able to appreciate it fully. He brought quite a lot of food, most of the products were things we don't use in our daily cooking so it would just take space in our food storage - and quite some of those products were things we simply never would eat - so in the end I think a lot of that food was just going to waste.
Which again circles back to the amazing opportunity that cooking huge meals gives us.
If you have a good selection of spices you can throw all sorts of bulk foods into a stew pot and produce edible nutritious hot food for people that need it.
14 years spent with rainbow family national gatherings showed me quite a amazing way that everybody can pull together.
And the training is really important for disaster relief as well as humanitarian crisis support.
In smallest way possible is to describe how to organize a group of people and feed each other as well as shelter each other and then starting to expand that help to feeding and sheltering even more people.
If you have yourself taken care of and a place to sleep you can then devote your efforts to changing the world.