I have been on the ground volunteering in Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. My work began out of necessity; I had been living in Kyiv since 2021 and was in Kharkiv on business when the invasion began. I woke up on February 24 to the sounds of Russian munitions exploding a few hundred meters from my hotel. I made the journey back to Kyiv under fire, grabbed some supplies from my apartment, and eventually managed to get to Warsaw. Once I was safe, I started a charity with some friends in Seattle, bought a couple of vehicles, and started sourcing and delivering medical and other humanitarian aid to front line hospitals and communities.
After the Russians pulled back in late 2022, my volunteers and I found ourselves in the liberated territories with a solid supply chain and a fleet of battered, but working vehicles. And so we expanded our focus, and started supporting communities that had been under Russian occupation for most of 2022. We immediately found ourselves surrounded by the explosive remnants of war: landmines, unexploded munitions, booby traps. And so we expanded our work once again into humanitarian demining. A number of us have been through Ukrainian sapper training, and we have been working to identify and clear hazardous areas throughout the liberated territories for nearly three years. Now in an effort to expand our reach, we are working to secure our national demining accreditation. This will allow us to officially participate in the land release process, which is an important step in getting Ukraine back on its feet and bringing its communities back to life.
This process is expensive, and requires us to maintain a staff, insurance and all the trappings of big demining NGO; this is quite a change for us, as we are used to be being small and scrappy. But it is a necessary step if we want to remain effective in the constantly changing landscape of a war-torn country. Please help us with a donation if you are able, and if not, consider sharing our fundraiser with your community. We are grateful for any assistance that you can provide.
The link to the fundraiser is here: https://gofund.me/c896feb33
And one more thought, for the techies reading this, our demining methods are pretty hi-tech in comparison to UN standards; we have been using ground robots and UAVs with AI to survey, identify and clear potential hazard areas. You can read more about that on the Sunflower Project website: https://www.bluestarsunflower.org/de-mining/
A Call for Support
