Recap #1: 8 Months of War - 8 Months of Arbeitskreis Nord-Ost

Dear supporters of AKNO,

more than 8 months have passed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February this year. 8 months in which we were confronted with something we thought was no longer possible: a conventional war in the middle of Europe. Since then, more than 12 million Ukrainians were forced to flee. 5,916 civilians have lost their lives, including at least 379 children - and these are only the confirmed dead so far, many still lying unknown under the rubble of Ukrainian cities. In addition, there are at least 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed: Parents and grandparents; members of all social classes. The country will be economically devastated after the war, many of its brightest minds and strongest backs dead or fled abroad; and it will take decades to clear the country of mines and rebuild its cities and economy. And all this only because Ukrainian people decided by majority vote for a more democratic future, contrary to the wishes of its imperialist neighbor.

For us Arbeitskreis Nord-Ost, this invasion has not only affected us emotionally, it has also changed our lives in a very practical way. For more than 8 months now, we have spent all our free time, besides our studies or jobs, to alleviate, where possible, the suffering of the countless innocent victims of this war. Shortly after the beginning of the invasion, our chairman Johannes quickly set up aid transports to the Romanian-Ukrainian border. Financed by private donations and with the tireless efforts of many medical students from Varna, we were able to send 8 aid shipments with a total of more than 20 carloads of various goods (clothing, food, etc.) to Ukraine.

This first engagement really got the ball rolling. Because apart from our own "satisfaction" of helping instead of just passively watching the catastrophe develop, we regularly received very good feedback from the various aid organizations from Ukraine and its neighboring countries. Obviously, we did not seem to be doing a bad job, and this finally gave us the motivation to dare to work on other projects as well. Therefore, we first started to support various German and international aid projects organizationally by sharing our experience and contacts with them and personally helping to put their request into practice. Of course, we also profited from this ourselves, because occasionally the respective persons or companies thanked us with smaller or larger donations and also made our small aid organization known in their personal environment.

In addition, another project began to take shape. Shocked by the conditions of Ukrainian refugees in our place of study Varna, especially concerning medical care, we wanted to use our medical background to provide at least basic medical care to these people. Our team member Eric established contact with "Medical Volunteers International" (MVI), who had (among other projects) organized medical care for refugees in the Greek refugee camp "Moria" by volunteers from various medical professions. MVI was enthusiastic about our project and now regularly organizes volunteers for us, whose work we organize, coordinate and of course also finance on site. Since June 2022, 9 volunteers (including doctors and nurses) have already been in Varna to examine and arrange necessary diagnostics or therapy for refugees without medical care. During this time, we were able to examine more than 500 patients and support them organizationally and financially in their further medical care. In the next few weeks, we will describe in detail our work in this project in a separate text.

Particularly through the effort of the latter commitment, however, we have also become aware of what we did not want to see for a long time: our scarce resources. On the one hand, in terms of organization: Our team consists primarily of medical students and doctors who volunteer their free time. Especially in the summer months, which were filled with exams and mandatory internships on the part of the students, this led to a general overwork and consequent neglect of supposedly less important areas of our humanitarian work (e.g. public relations and fundraising). This, combined with a significant drop in donations, meant that by early September our project was on the verge of failing due to a lack of organizational and financial resources.

Thanks to an expansion of our core team by a few people who have been actively supporting us for a long time, and thanks to the generous financial donations from various organisations, we have now been able to ensure that our project will continue at least until the end of 2022. Nevertheless, our resources only allow us to take care of some of the refugees accommodated in the Varna region and our other projects also must pause for the time being due to a lack of resources. In order to continue our work, we will now put more effort into public relations and fundraising, not only to be able to finance our work permanently, but also to be able to expand it, if possible.

If we were able to convince you of our work, we would ask you to continue to support us: be it through financial contributions (“every dollar counts!”), by making our work known to friends and acquaintances or to local organizations, or just simply by following us on social media and supporting our posts. You can find more ideas on our website: XXX. We, but especially the many Ukrainians affected by Russia's war of aggression, are dependent on your support.

"Last but not least" we would like to thank all those who have supported us so generously over the past 7 months: to the many private donors who have ensured most of our work to date; the companies and organizations that supported us materially or financially and with whom we were allowed to work; our friends and families, without whose tireless support one or the other might have already given up. We owe you all a big thank you, because without you our project would have been doomed to fail from the start.

The war continues, a hard winter is just around the corner and, unfortunately, there is still a long way to go to end the suffering. Nonetheless, giving up is of no use. And together – but only together! – will we get through these hard times and bring a brighter future to its victims.