How You Can Support Ukraine in Wartime
This is a heavy time for Ukraine. russia launched an unprovoked, full-scale war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Our upcoming episodes for the foreseeable future will be focusing on what’s happening in Ukraine.
Especially lately, we are thinking about the people in Ukraine, Ukrainians around the world, those we’ve met, those we haven’t had the chance to meet yet, the places in Ukraine we’ve been to, the places we dream of going, the culture, the traditions — we’re thinking about and reflecting on it all.
It’s heartbreaking to see this destruction. Like a lot of people, we have been experiencing so many emotions and feelings, including feeling helpless. We wanted to highlight some ways you can support Ukraine no matter where you are.
Below we have a couple interviews about places you can donate to and who that support will help. Before we get into that, we’ll share some ways you can help even if you aren’t able to donate money right now.
How You Can Support Ukraine
Stay informed and share information with others, but make sure it’s from a trusted source, and confirm it in multiple places before sharing. Among many, one of our go-tos is Kyiv Independent and its reporters. We also have a list of some accounts to follow on one of our recent posts on Instagram and Facebook.
Attend rallies. Follow your local Ukrainian organization on social media to find out when they are. For us in Winnipeg, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) Manitoba Chapter is one place that posts information about rallies.
Send emails to politicians and organization higher-ups. Places like the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and leaders in your Ukrainian community put out templates to pressure the government to fulfil Ukraine’s needs and minimize obstacles for Ukrainians seeking refuge.
Volunteer your time. Again, if you follow your local Ukrainian organization, they may ask for volunteers to help organize donations, for example.
Take care of yourself, as best as you can. Reach out for support, a friend, mental health professional, or whoever else when you need, and let Ukrainians know you support them. We can better care for others when we first take care of ourselves.
Interview with Vincent Rees of Cobblestone Freeway
Vince Rees, the founder and owner of Cobblestone Freeway Tours, joined us to talk about the aid the Cobblestone Freeway Foundation is providing to Ukraine.
How has the Cobblestone team shifted its focus to helping people who are affected by the war?
The Cobblestone Team on the ground in Ukraine and Poland.
Cobblestone Freeway Tours is a Canadian-Ukrainian-based company. One of our missions is to simply share Ukraine with the world with tourism. Of course, tourism is not happening now or for the foreseeable future. So we’ve shifted our focus, and we’re doing all we can to support our team and our friends and their families in Ukraine. Many of them, in turn, are supporting other efforts in Ukraine, including refugees, mothers who need to get out, the military, orphanages, schools, journalists — anything they can do to help.
The other day, Bogdan and Yulia from our team were with the Fox News journalists who were killed. That was a very difficult day. Our team is OK — they weren’t with them at the time — but it just goes to show that this is too close. It’s very real. We’re just trying to support how we can.
We started the Cobblestone Freeway Foundation three years ago to support cultural projects in Ukraine. We were supporting a school in the Carpathian Mountains. We were supporting folk groups. Now we’re completely focused on supporting refugees and people in need. We’re collecting money and sending it directly to the people who need it.
There’s lots of organizations out there raising money, and they’re all doing an amazing job. We’re small, we’re trying to help the people we know in a meaningful way by taking the money that we receive from all our wonderful donors, who care about our staff, who have met our staff, who have met our people throughout Ukraine and want to make sure they are taken care of.
We’ve had specific requests: “Make sure Taras gets this money! Make sure Bogdan gets this money! Make sure Yulia gets this money!” We’ve been collecting money and sending it directly to them, and they’ve been using the money to help other people. Our team isn’t worried about themselves, because they know we’ve got their backs, and they’re in turn able to help other people. It’s been an overwhelming response from our Cobblestone community.
What is the supply like for resources in Ukraine? Can people still buy things?
I know a lot of stuff is coming in though Poland, and Lviv is like a hub. It’s really hard to find a place to stay in Lviv. People are sleeping on our office floor. People are living on people’s couches. There are 10 people living in our office. We’re lucky we have that space that has a kitchen, a bathroom, a couple rooms. We went and bought cots.
Compared to Mariupol or Kharkiv, Lviv is accessing food readily. That’s not their biggest problem right now.
Supplies were provided to an expecting mother that came to Lviv from Kharkiv.
New sneakers for displaced orphans now living in Lviv.
Can you share a story or two about some people you’ve helped support?
Early on, a school for orphans from Bila Tserkva, which is south of Kyiv, evacuated, and the entire school came to Lviv. Dima, one of our team members, his mom is a principal at a school for people who are blind in Lviv. This school opened itself up to this group of orphans, and we’re making sure they are fed, have diapers, have warm clothes. We’re continuing to make sure those children are taking care of.
A lot of people ask about how to adopt an orphan, but that’s something we don’t know how to do at this time. If we do hear of anything, we will post about it.
Another story is a pregnant mother from another city who is staying with us in Lviv. She’s alone, and she’s due any day now. We’ve been getting her anything she needs to prepare for birth in a strange city where she’s surrounded by strangers.
One of the singers from Rozhanytsia who has four kids lived in our office for a while. She’s now in Poland. We’ve sent her some money as well. Imagine feeding four kids without a job. These are small stories of what we can do, and we want people to know exactly where there money is going.
Snizhana from our team is in Poland right now and said at the train station, by the look on people’s faces, you can tell if they’re from Kyiv or from Kharkiv. People from Kyiv are troubled and distraught, but the people from Kharkiv, they are broken. It’s beyond our comprehension.
The Cobblestone Freeway Foundation is a not-for-profit society set up in Alberta. It’s separate from Cobblestone Freeway Tours. It’s not a registered charity yet. If people want to donate somewhere but need a tax receipt, I recommend donating to the Canada Ukraine Foundation.
Listen to the full episode to hear more from Vince, like an overview of Ukrainian history and some inspiring words for Ukrainian dancers. We included a few more quotes from Vince below.
On accurately representing Ukrainian culture:
We need to move away from the stereotypes of Ukrainian culture — the drunk kozak, the baba waving her rolling pin, the fact that Ukrainians are just farmers. I grew up with all that too. I enjoyed it for what it was at the time, but we’ve reinforced negative stereotypes about Ukraine through dance.
The Ukrainian dance diaspora around the world is huge, and we have a voice and a platform. We should be using it to educate our audiences about Ukraine’s history and culture. Everyone loves a good Buko polka, and I don’t think we should stop doing that, but I think we should also use our voices and platforms to tell the world the truth about the history of Ukraine.
We need to make movies, write books, tell stories, raise awareness of the history of Ukraine and how integral Ukrainian history has been to the history of Europe. We need to tell the perspectives of Ukraine’s story. Ukrainians have done so many things, and so many things happened on the territory of Ukraine, that the world doesn’t know about because it was called Austria at the time, or it was called the Soviet Union at the time, or it was called Poland at the time. But those were Ukrainian people, and it happened on Ukrainian land, and we need to own that history and tell that history.
“Do not let Ukrainian culture get washed away.”
On who to look to for credible information about Ukraine:
Timothy Snyder is an excellent historian on Ukrainian topics. He discusses how important Ukraine is to history.
On the importance of Ukrainian dance around the world:
We need to remember why we’re dancing in the first place. It’s more than just a happy hobby — that’s a byproduct. The main reason Ukrainian dance groups around the world exist is to raise awareness of Ukrainian culture. Now more than ever we need to get back to that mission. I encourage people to dance harder than ever, to spin faster, jump higher, train harder, go to dance with a purpose. Do not let Ukrainian culture get washed away.
On where you can see Vince in a Canadian city near you:
I’ve been very involved with the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers for the past 30 years, and they are going on tour again this fall. It’s a tour that was put off because of COVID for a couple years, but Shumka is finally getting across Canada for a cross-country tour. And they needed an old man to play a little role in the show, so I’m happy I get the chance to go on stage and play the role of an old man. For Ukrainian dancers, there will be workshops associated with the tour that people can participate in. I hope to see you all come out. They will be collecting money at the show to raise money for the Canada-Ukraine Foundation. You can find tour dates online.
Resources from Vince
Learn more about Cobblestone Freeway Foundation:
Learn more about Cobblestone Freeway Tours:
For news, resources, and videos about Ukrainian dance, check out Ukrainian Dance World:
Zoya Kostetsky of Prairie Clay, a Ukrainian immigrant and maker in Manitoba.
Interview with Zoya Kostetsky of Prairie Clay
Zoya Kostetsky of Prairie Clay is a maker in Manitoba who creates jewelry from polymer clay. She’s a proud Ukrainian who launched a fundraiser only hours after the full-scale war started. Zoya put a call out to local makers in Manitoba to donate some of their goods or things they make, and she collected them and made incredible prizes. To enter the draw, people donated money that Zoya sent to Ukraine various organizations.
Lots of the places you donated to were grassroots organizations, ones that people may not have heard about. Tell us about some of these organizations and what you’re connection to them is.
My mom and I are both part of a bunch of Ukrainian Facebook groups, so when I started collecting money, I started to think, Where can this money make the biggest difference? We put a call-out on social media to our Ukrainian friends to ask if they knew anyone in Ukraine who could use this money for gas to transport people, for collecting bulletproof vests, for helping refugees.
We were able to get in touch with people in Ukraine who were on the ground doing the work. My mom and I speak Ukrainian, and we’ve sent money to family in Ukraine before, so this knowledge helped us.
You’ve shared many stories on Instagram about the people you’ve been able to help. What are a couple stories of the immediate impacts that the money you raised has had?
One woman in Nizhyn, Ukraine, is working at a centre with children with disabilities. They are not able to escape because many of the children are in wheelchairs. This woman and another volunteer there are staying behind to take care of the children. They’ve been taking shifts with the flow of refugees and the flow of soldiers coming in through the soldiers to help them in any way they can.
We’ve sent them money to support them, and they’ve sent us amazing videos of them cooking and cleaning and videos of the kids, which has been really heartwarming to see.
A note from Oleksii, a Ukrainian soldier, who was saved by a bulletproof vest purchased through Zoya’s fundraising efforts.
Another woman, Svitlana, in Lviv has a friend Oleksii who was enlisted into the military. He’s from Kyiv. They met up in Lviv and told Svitlana that his group of soldiers really need bulletproof vests because so many people who are being enlisted aren’t of military background. We collected money for that.
A week later, Svitlana messaged me and said, “Hey, do you remember Oleksii?” My heart sank — I wasn’t sure where this message was going. I said I remembered him, then she told me she got a message from him. It said, “Thank you for the bulletproof vest. Today it saved my life.”
Oleksii was attacked from behind and got shot in the back a few times, and that bulletproof vest saved his life. It really sunk in that this fundraising was making a difference.
You organized this fundraiser so soon after the full-scale war started.
I guess it’s my coping mechanism. I was getting ready for bed the night before, going on Instagram for a stupid amount of time, and I saw people’s stories. I have friends and family in Ukraine. I messaged my cousin right away, and she said she was OK but that things had started. I didn’t sleep the whole night, and I was thinking what can I do. I felt helpless. I thought about it overnight, and in the morning I woke up and thought I’d put a call-out to local businesses to see if they’d donate some gifts, and if I can raise some money, that money can go to Ukraine.
My midnight that night, I was overwhelmed with the response. It was incredible to see not just the Ukrainian community come together but the whole Manitoba community come together, people of all different backgrounds and cultures.
I still post about the war to show that it’s ongoing, and people are still donating money, though it has slowed down. We just hit over $60,000. You’d be blown away by some people’s generosity.
My partner helps out with the math and bookkeeping, and my mom has been wonderful in contacting the groups, and my dad has been the manpower — it’s a team effort.
Funds from Zoya’s fundraising were sent to a group of volunteers working in Lviv to provide medical supplies, bullet proof vests, and other necessities to hot spots in Ukraine.
Is there anything about the war in Ukraine that you’d like to share that North American media isn’t covering?
I’ll start with a positive note. I think that something that’s not being covered enough is how incredible Ukraine is fighting back. Personally, in the past, I’ve never really thought about the military, I’ve never really supported war, troops, that kind of thing. I was always on the peaceful side of things. But I now realize the Ukrainian military does need support. If you compare 40 million people to 140 million people, the size of the countries, money, everything — Ukraine has done such an incredible job at defending its land and culture and people.
We need to keep supporting Ukrainians to get through this. I don’t think the world recognized Ukraine as such a strong and independent country before the war. It’s definitely put Ukraine in the spotlight to show its resiliency, especially President Zelensky, which I think a lot of people, including myself, weren’t sure about when he first came into office as an ex-comedian. But he’s been incredible and has really spoken to who Ukrainian people are, and he’s just done a wonderful job of leading the country in this war.
Another thing I want to mention is how scary it is to see russia fall back into the Soviet mindset. Both of my parents grew up in what was at the time the Soviet Union. Years ago, I heard my parents tell stories about the Soviet Union, and it’s so scary to see this come back, especially that mentality of imperialism and wiping out any chance of freedom and having a voice. A lot of these people are so repressed and suppressed in this country that they are going to be stuck there, and it’s scary to see that in the 21st century.
“It’s still very relevant, it’s not getting any better, and we need to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds because this is more than just about Ukraine — it’s about having freedom and the freedom of speech.”
Are there any needs arising in Ukraine that may not be as obvious as what’s in the news?
There are plenty. Even when the war ends, Ukraine will need to rebuild. The amount of damage that is being done to thousands-year-old architecture, art, buildings, streets — it’s going to need to be repaired. Ukrainians are very passionate about their art and culture, so that’s definitely going to be an important thing.
It’s still very relevant, it’s not getting any better, and we need to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds because this is more than just about Ukraine — it’s about having freedom and the freedom of speech.
Keep it in the forefront, post about it, donate if you can, volunteer if you can. We’re going to have an influx of refugees who will need support. Learn the language if you can, learn about the culture, and hug your Ukrainian friends because they need it.
Here’s how to stay in touch with Zoya and support her fundraising:
To hear even more from Vince and Zoya, listen to the full episode.
Thank you, Vince and Zoya, for taking time to join us today. We are so grateful to you and your teams for all the work you are doing to support Ukraine today and to support Ukraine always.
And to our listeners, we’ll share a message many Ukrainians have shared with us. Even though we’re the ones keeping them in our thoughts showing our support, they always say to us, "Тримайся.”
It means to hold on, to keep fighting, to not give up.
Support Ukraine, support each other, and take care of yourself so we can continue doing the good work.
Слава Україні! Slava Ukraini!