Help us feed refugees from Ukraine

You’ll have to forgive me, I’m usually late writing these reports every few months, mostly because I have a feeling the Ukraine thing just isn’t relevant to people outside this region anymore. There’s also the fact that we average only a few donations per month via GlobalGiving since New Year’s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these links end up in spam…

Anyway, for those who are curious, we are still extremely busy with our core operation, food security. We manage the longest-running food bank in the city that serves over 2,000 families per week, we send a truck to visit 1-2 rural communities per week, and since February, a group of Ukrainian diaspora invited us to make weekly trips to Odesa and beyond. We even brought food to Kherson before the flood.

While most other refugee initiatives have long closed down, we’re still here, and we’re still trying, even though none of us have humanitarian backgrounds.

Our staying power is mostly because we approach the problem differently.

a) We provide the same food we feed our own families, and these days that means strawberries and salad greens and tomatoes and cucumbers. Fresh food, not sacks of rice and boxes of anonymous meat spread. It’s so much more work, to procure, pack and transport, but it pays off when you see their faces.

b) We support the local economy by buying over 90% of our fruits, vegetables and grains direct from Moldovan farmers and processors.

c) Over half our team are Ukrainians, we put them to work the first week, and many have said it’s important to have something stable in their life like packing at our food bank once a week, where they can socialize and feel useful.

d) We aim for more holistic relationships with our clients, by organizing cooking courses for all ages, from kids to retired, by teaching hard skills like construction basics or how to open and manage a private daycare. We’re working with a group of Ukrainian food entrepreneurs to open a cooperative café/catering business. And we drive around the country in our old hippie bus, organizing camps to integrate Ukrainian and Moldovan kids.

The main idea is we’re doing what we can in our small corner of Moldova, even though it’s small scale, low budget and amateur.

Thank you GlobalGiving and all our individual donors for helping us establish a strong foundation last year.

Links:

• Our hippie bus in action
• Keeping kids busy
• Running around Moldova

Yep, the last 6 months or so, I feel like I write these reports, then just throw them out there, not knowing if anyone still reads them, if we’re even on anybody’s mind any more, what with everything else going on.

But we’re still holding it together, after a year of craziness.

Well, we’re actually doing better than just surviving.

Last month there was a national survey among refugees, asking them who they appreciate most, among all support providers. From 22 organizations, we scored second place, right behind the government-run initiative funded by the UN and many others, with a budget probably 20 times ours.

Yeah, that was cool. Especially considering we weren’t in the humanitarian field before.

If there’s one piece of advice I would give the big guys, or the guys who have this as a career, it’s to swallow your pride and ask people objective questions about what they want, what they need, how others help them already and what they think about your work.

Sure, it’s easy to give away stuff…once. Behavioral economists say there’s a primitive button that’s pressed when you say “free”, where people will spend more time in line for something than it’s worth. Being relevant over the long-term, especially with such a modest budget, requires understanding the people you serve.

And when we say modest, the last couple of months we really mean it, since right after New Year we lost one of our major food donors, so now we can only afford to give out $5 bags of food (yep, that’s almost half what it was, but it was that or turn away a thousand families per week). More importantly, we still focus on vitamins over calories, case in point, last week we gave out fresh whole grain bread, apples, potatoes, carrots, buckwheat and pickles.

Other than that, before winter we insulated hundreds of old apartments, bought over 1,000 pairs of boots and house slippers and gloves, and we delivered over 5,000 family-sized water filters to parts of the country with the worst water quality.

During winter we ran cooking clubs, with different workshops for kids, young adults, single parents and the elderly.

Also, a couple of big Ukrainian diaspora groups heard about us, appreciate our style, and asked if we could find and pack food that would get shipped to southern parts of Ukraine. The last month we’ve been sending two full semi-trailers EACH WEEK. Talk about volume. Since they only buy the food and cover basic expenses, we’ll probably start a new fundraiser soon to get a better forklift, and add more warehouse space and shelves. Storing and processing 80 metric tons (175,000 lbs) per week is definitely a juggle…

Thank you again to GlobalGiving and to all our donors, without your help we’d probably still be 3 volunteers bouncing around in an old van, trying to make a difference.

Links:

• National survey of refugee services