Volunteering movement in Ukraine: an absolute phenomenon of the war time

Volunteering movement in Ukraine has become an absolute phenomenon of the war time. It has shown that despite of who you are and what you do in everyday life – you can always give a hand to those who need it right now.

One from production project team «Train & Donate» — this is Timur Horenych, a talented DOP and cinematographer. Together with his friends they have established a charity fund «Liutyi», which specializes in helping Armed Forces of Ukraine and evacuation civilians from hot places.

Since the first days of war he together with his friends have joined to support Ukrainian military people. At the same time, due to the tense situation at the front, there is a need to evacuate civilians from frontline cities. First of all, Timur and his team evacuated children and disabled people, and the others they supplied with food. Kharkiv, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Chasiv Yar, Bakhmut. There have been so many requests that there were the days when the guys sent more than ten evacuation cars per day.

Moreover, there was a growth in requests from military people: they needed cars, equipment, thermal imagers. Most of the tasks guys covered with their own means, and first fund raising they organized in summer 2022. While doing a voluntary job they came up with the idea of creating a project “Art for donation” – a lottery, where the winner gets a unique trophy from military people, crafted by artists.

The idea of this fundraising arose organically, since all team members are artistic people with their own view: musicians, videographers, artists. So there was no need to look for visualizers to create art objects. Getting artefacts also wasn’t a problem: military men from time to time presented our guys with different trophies, for example tubes from shells. This is how we turned into life the idea of creating a meaningful art object and to draw it among the audience, aiming to raise money for AFU.

Art for donation – is a result of team work of creative community of indifferent people. A design of every object is created together – in the evenings the team generates ideas, which often contain stories connected with some artefacts. A process of one object creation since it is transmitted to us from military people till the moment of drawing it is up to two weeks.

The auction takes place in social networks of guys among their friends, with their effort we could raise from $1,250 to $2,000. The biggest one-piece donation was $275.

Timur’s team hasn’t organized any big fund-raising, since it has been concentrated on other projects, among which there was an organization of the marathon for children who suffered at war. But pretty soon “Art for Donation” is going to come back! Because it has always been important for people there to create those things which are important for society, bring pleasure both for them and people around. Especially when it gives opportunity to help those who are in need. «Humanity first!»