In Gratitude: A List of Charities

(A version of this post also appears as a Kickstarter update.)

On Saturday, September 30, 2023, 1,072 backers pledged $23,567 to help bring Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora to life. Our Kickstarter backers included people from all over the world!

We are so grateful for all the ways that people showed their support over the past month: becoming backers, sharing posts, telling friends, engaging with our updates. Together we created a global community of readers for these thirty fantastic stories, and we are so excited for people to read them.

Many people asked us about other ways to help the people in Ukraine. Kickstarter requires all funds raised to facilitate the project, and with the funds raised here we’ll be producing a beautiful book and sharing stories of Ukrainian culture, art, and resilience around the world. Again, thank you.

Our team understands the broad range of ways the Ukrainian people still need help, and we are committed to do what we can.

So we asked our authors and translators about the charities they work with and trust, and I want to share that list with you now:

Dobrobrat:

Dobrobat is a volunteer construction battalion that assists the survivors in the de-occupied territories in the urgent restoration of housing and social infrastructure.

http://dobrobat.in.ua/

Come Back Alive:

Protect the Sky is a joint charitable project organized by the charity foundation Come Back Alive and the Ukrainian postal company Nova Post. The project is designed to help Air Defense reduce their reaction time from minutes to seconds.

http://dobrobat.in.ua/

Unite with Ukraine:

Funds raised are being used to supply an evolving range of needs to the brave men and women on the front line, including: individual first aid kits; bullet-proof vests and helmets; night-vision goggles; and communication equipment and fuel, among other things.

https://unitewithukraine.com/

Chytomo magazine:

CHYTOMO is the largest independent media covering publishing and contemporary literary and cultural processes in Ukraine.

https://chytomo.com/en/

UA Animals:

Since the beginning of the full scale war, UA Animals has actively been helping animals within war zones: evacuate, provide feed and medicines for shelters.

https://uanimals.org/en/

Razom:

In a very short time, Razom has built an inspiring network of partners, volunteers, and donors that fuel the community, and consistently activate people in the United States and Ukraine to help Ukraine unlock its potential. Their projects are designed to have tangible, immediate manifestations of impact and provide opportunities for scalable growth ensuring that impact lasts.

Razom – Together we are Ukraine (razomforukraine.org)

United24:

UNITED24 is designed for collaboration with charities, partners, donors, and public figures worldwide. Their goal is to establish an efficient work process that brings Ukraine’s victory closer.

https://u24.gov.ua/projects

If you are looking for places to lend support, these are just a few of the many organizations that exist to help

Thank you to all the people working tirelessly in Ukraine and in other parts of the world: healing the wounded, tending to the dying, comforting the grieving, providing shelter, food, education, and resources, caring for the land, working to bring an end to violence and injustice. There is so much work to be done all around this beautiful planet we call home.

I believe that together we can make a positive difference, and I hope that the ripples of support and love and community continue to expand outward.

I thank you wholeheartedly. Щиро вам дякую.

Published by Valya

Valya Dudycz Lupescu has been making magic with food and words for more than 20 years, incorporating folklore from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth. She’s a writer, content developer, instructor, and mother of three teenagers. Valya is the author of MOTHER CHRISTMAS, THE SILENCE OF TREES, and the founding editor of CONCLAVE: A Journal of Character. Along with Stephen H. Segal, she is the co-author of FORKING GOOD: An Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of The Good Place and GEEK PARENTING: What Joffrey, Jor-El, Maleficent, and the McFlys Teach Us about Raising a Family (Quirk Books), and co-founder of the Wyrd Words storytelling laboratory. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and magazines that include, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Kenyon Review, Culture, Gargoyle Magazine, Gone Lawn, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium. You can find her on Twitter @valya and on Mastodon.social @valya

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