Help millions of Ukrainians – help our media

Hello! My partner, Vera, will talk about our cause:

 

Hi! My name is Vera. I am a journalist, entrepreneur and a girl from Ukraine. Five years ago, I got brave enough to make my dream come true and launched my own business — an online publication that’s called Media for Creators.

 

We have been writing about tech and entrepreneurship. By this winter, our team had grown to 40 people, and 4 million Ukrainians are reading our articles monthly. Our media group now also includes two other outlets — ITC , a publication about technology, and Highload , a news website for developers.

 

We had a beautiful dream: to inspire Ukrainians to believe in themselves, do more, and turn Ukraine into a prosperous country.

 

On the 24th of February, Russia and its president Putin decided to deprive us of this dream. He sent military troops to our cities. Launched rockets at our houses.

 

Russia is trying to take away our future, our freedom, and even our lives.

 

Instead of tech news, we started to tell our readers about the war. We’ve put all our effort into helping our readers survive here and now. We’ve run articles on how to hide from bombs, rescue oneself during a gunfight, survive an explosive blast, choose the safest bomb shelter.

 

Air raid alerts sound above all Ukrainian cities now. Inside our country, there is no safe place anymore.

 

And still, my journalists keep working from bomb shelters, villages in the middle of nowhere, and other countries where they had to escape from the atrocities of this war.

 

They go on publishing hundreds of news stories and feature articles every day to tell our readers the truth.

 

I believe in the victory of my land. But I don’t know how much more effort and blood it will take.

 

I look at our bank account, and I understand we won’t survive until then without your help.

 

I don’t want to close my publications, but we’ve stopped getting money from advertisers — there is no need to advertise in a country suffering from war. My obligation is to go on supporting my journalists and their families. And keep our media working for our readers.

 

My dream is that soon, very soon, we will stop writing about war and will go back to telling stories of the amazing Ukrainians who build technology businesses.

 

For this dream to come true, our media have to survive until the victory.

Please help us survive to keep doing journalism for the sake of Ukraine — and in a free Ukraine.

 

Could you please support us with your donations? The amount we’re looking to raise will be enough for us to last for the next months.

 

And after that, I believe, Ukraine will win. And we will move on to rebuilding our country.

 

Thank you!

How we will use funds raised

We will spend the money raised to pay for:

- Salaries of our team, ca. 40 people

- Technical support of our websites

- Help for those who relocated to different countries to escape war, these are. ca 40% of the team

- Platform comission and taxes, up to 15% of all the sum.

The budget we aim to raise, 300 thousand euro, will be enough for us to last for 4-5 months. 

 

 

 

HERE ARE SOME WARTIME STORIES FROM JOURNALISTS OF OUR TEAM

 

Evgenia, Editor, 37 years old

 

When I first heard explosions and an air raid alarm, we went to the basement of our house. That’s not a real bomb shelter, just an ordinary basement of our apartment block. It’s dirty and dusty, with a lot of pipes, some of which leak water.

 

Many of our neighbors were there already, many with children, all frightened. One neighbor, who was 8 or 9 months pregnant, was lying on a mat. She said that if she had to run like that several times more, she would give birth in that basement.

 

The first couple of days, I was in total shock. Panicking, trying to find everything needed, give it to my parents, get food.

 

 

Then all of our editorial team switched to covering news. For me, it was an anchor to normal life - I had a task to do. Of course, when you write an article to the sounds of explosions, and from time to time you have to run out of the house because of an air raid alarm, it is hard to concentrate. Today, for example, there were six or seven alerts.

 

But when I work, I don’t cry. I don’t have enough strength to volunteer physically, and the fact that I’m writing articles that can help someone survive supports me a lot.

 

Vladimir, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, 32 years old

 

On February 25th, a rocket hit Rivne airport at about 6:30. We grabbed our daughter, backpacks and in five minutes were in a bomb shelter. In the first days of the war, we slept fully dressed, so we could get ready to go to the shelter very quickly.

 

My daughter Anya, eight years old, often wakes up in the middle of the night - she thinks she hears sirens, bombs and shots.

 

Every time someone gets a notification on the phone, she asks whether it’s an air raid alarm signal. She is very afraid that her room will burn down because of shelling. She is always hugging her toy, even in her sleep.

 

It’s impossible to imagine the mental state of children and their parents in Ukrainian cities that are under daily fire.

 

 

Victoria, IT journalist, 24 years old

 

When the Russians dropped a vacuum bomb, I went into a state of complete shock – nothing can save you from such a bomb. I have always had so many plans, so many ambitions, and it hurts me a lot to think that I won’t be able to do anything. One second, and you’re dead.

 

When someone approaches you with a weapon, it’s scary. But you think, “I’ll do my best to fight back”. But when a bomb falls on you, what can you do?

 

Iryna, Journalist, 41 years old

 

The scariest moment for me was when our house “jumped up” because of an explosion.

 

I was at home, and my mother and daughter went to a store to get food. In the time of war, such a trip does not take five minutes anymore - first, you need to stand in a line at the entrance to the store, then in a line to get bread and then at the checkout. The moment they left, this terrible explosion thundered and the house shuddered. Later I learned that the explosion was from a rocket hitting a courtyard of a residential building. Thank God, no one died.

 

It’s good that I’ve been working all this time. It took away the fear. If you can’t go and fight with a gun, then you can fight with words. This is an incredible feeling of unity - when everyone does what they can: we have one goal, and we have one enemy.

 

 

Pavel, tech journalist, 36 years old

 

I never thought I would hear rocket explosions, or that my five-year-old son would hear them. It’s very scary. The feeling of safety disappears instantly, and only the fear remains — for relatives and friends, for your own life.

 

What helps not to go nuts is understanding that we are Good, and they are Evil, as in “The Lord of the Rings.” They are a huge Mordor with orcs, and we are a small and freedom-loving Gondor. We will definitely win.

 

Olga, Editor, 40 years

 

Now there are not many emotions; my mind is trying to suppress them. It helps to survive. Work allows me to stay realistic and not slip into a panic. My bomb shelter is in my flat’s corridor, between the two walls. I equipped it with a mat, an Internet wire, a landline phone, and an extension cord.

 

The second night in Kyiv was the most terrible. Shots and explosions practically did not stop. The realization that you need to do something - to help others or even yourself - allows me not to fall apart.

 

 

Tatiana, News Editor, 33 years old

 

On February 24th, I woke up at 5 am from loud explosions. My car had a full tank of gas. I came up with an escape plan in advance when I read the news that Putin might attack. That’s the kind of person I am, I always have a plan.

 

It was very scary to stand in a huge traffic jam in the middle of the night. I thought then that this is an excellent target for missiles - a luminous strip of cars. I was very scared when military planes flew low above my head.

 

I felt so tired and exhausted in a traffic jam near Uzhgorod after not sleeping for more than 24 hours, I thought it would be the most embarrassing and useless death. I asked a friend to google how many hours one can go without sleep. She said 11 days. Strangely, I felt much better.

 

 

Olena, IT Editor, 32 years old

 

On the second night of the war, I woke up to a low-pitched sound in the sky. Now I know how fighter jets fly. My body shrank and shivered - as if I was freezing. I was lying in my bed and thinking to myself, “Calm down, there is nothing to be afraid of, everything is in order.” And so on, for a couple of hours. It got easier with the dawn.

 

Now in my 25 square meters apartment in Lviv (a relatively calm region in western Ukraine), I host a family with a baby from Kharkiv. I sleep in the corridor in a sleeping bag - a chance to remember my camping youth. It’s the least I can do right now - work and pay taxes, support small businesses and give shelter to those who need it.

 

Anastasia, Editor, 38 years old

 

On the first three days of the war, I wanted to wake up in the past and understand that it was some kind of a terrible dream. Even my 8-year-old son keeps on asking to be pinched and told that there is no war.

 

I believe in victory and that our country has great chances to win. I know why and for whom I live. And for some reason, I don’t panic. I realized that I live in a country where a war is going on, so I accepted it. This helps too.

 

 

Sergey, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, 46 years old

 

When the war began, my wife, two children and a cat moved to my native village near Cherkasy. My sister and her child had miraculously escaped from Irpin - this city has been heavily shelled and attacked by the Russian troops. It turned out that sounds of machine guns approaching are much scarier than bombs and shelling.

 

I still have a feeling that things that are happening now are not real. I have no answer to the simple question - what to do next. I do not want to leave Ukraine and to go abroad. And I cannot return home to Kyiv, as it is continuously shelled by Russian troops.

 

Gleb, Tech journalist, 26 years old

 

I keep on seeing in front of my eyes how a man is taken out of his car that was run over by a Russian tank a few minutes before. That man just drove along the road, and a Russian soldier decided he had the right to kill him.

 

We have got used to constant explosions, shots. It is now a part of everyday life, as well as going down into bomb shelters and news that thousands of people are dead, injured, and left without a roof over their heads.

 

I just hope none of my loved ones die or become crippled.

 

Someday this will end and we can again live in a world in which the biggest problem is an overdue loan payment and the closure of our favorite bar.

 

I just want to live, meet my family and friends I saw before the war, and stop being afraid that tomorrow may not come for some of them. I want peace.