Jay Ruderman:

Welcome to All About Change.

Today my guess is Yuriy Boyechko. Yuriy is a Ukrainian expat. He came to America to get a degree and he brought with him memories of Russia’s impact on Ukrainian life. He remembered his father imprisoned for working as a priest. He also remembered president after president living in Putin’s pocket. And in 2016, after Russia annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbass region of Ukraine, Yuriy decided to leave behind a career in reality television and founded Hope For Ukraine.

Hope For Ukraine provides humanitarian aid to families in need, supports communities, and fosters education in Ukraine. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the organization has been hard at work. They have partnered with local organizations to host summer camps for Ukrainian refugee children in cities across Ukraine, the US and Italy. In May, Hope For Ukraine achieved accreditation by the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. At the time, Boyechko’s organization had marked 82 million meals served, 825 individuals were rescued from the war zone, 52 hospitals, clinics were provided with essential medical supplies, 1,875 tons of humanitarian aid delivered, 1,544 refugees sheltered, and 600 children weekly attend after-school programs. Wherever there are Ukrainians impacted by Russian aggression, Yuriy and Hope For Ukraine are there providing the support these people need.

Yuriy Boyechko, welcome to All About Change and thank you for being my guest today.

Yuriy Boyechko:

Thanks for having me, Jay. Thank you.

Jay Ruderman:

So I’ve seen many of your media appearances, and when you talk about Hope For Ukraine, you talk about it being by and for Ukrainians, and you emphasize that your organization is on the ground in Ukraine. In addition, you applaud other organizations who are on the ground in Ukraine. Why do you think it’s so important that the organizations that are working in Ukraine have a direct connection to the country?

Yuriy Boyechko:

Yeah, because I think the situation on the ground right now is so dire, and unless you have serious boots-on-the-ground operation you cannot be really effective as organization. And I pride ourself in having one of the largest volunteering network on the ground in Ukraine. So basically we are able to purchase the truck full of food somewhere in Europe and get it to our warehouse in Lviv, Ukraine and get it to the front-line towns in a matter of 10 days and distribute that. And that’s thanks because of the network we have on the ground. And that’s very important, because right now the difficulties and the horror that civilians are facing on the ground, it’s a matter of couple days for them to have food on a table or have nothing to eat. Because some of the areas we go to, there’s no supermarkets, there’s no regular deliveries of groceries, so they solely rely on food distribution and humanitarian aid deliveries. So that’s why it’s very vital to have quick response.

For example, there is a bombing in certain part of Ukraine. We trying to activate our resources as soon as possible to get aid there within 24 to 48 hours to assist those that’s affected. So that’s why it’s very important for nonprofits who are working in the crisis areas to have a serious presence on the ground to make sure we are effective. Because at the end of the day, our goal as a nonprofit is to solve the issues. Not to do conferences, not to do things that planning strategy meetings, but actually deliver aid. So that’s why I think that’s very important.

Jay Ruderman:

As I studied your organization, I was shocked to learn about a major issue of children impacted by HIV-AIDS. Talk about this issue. I guess it’s a major issue, but I didn’t even know that there was a problem in Ukraine.

Clip:

In Moldova and Ukraine alone, it is estimated that thousands of children live on the street to escape the problems at home where violence, alcohol, and drugs prevail.

Because they share needles or sell their bodies for sex, these children run a high risk of being infected with HIV.

Worldwide, the number of HIV infections is decreasing, and fewer and fewer people are dying of AIDS. But here in Europe, closer than you think, the number of HIV infections is on the rise.

Yuriy Boyechko:

So that was one of our first programs when we started Hope For Ukraine. Because Ukraine was number two country in Europe after Russia for HIV-AIDS epidemic before the war. And there was a lot of kids who were born to HIV positive parents with a virus in their young bodies, and the government was giving them some sort of medical treatment to help for the disease not to progress, but it was not enough. So then we would step in and we would work with these families to provide supplemental medical treatment and resources to these kids to make sure that disease does not progress. Healthcare in Ukraine, you have to pay money for it. Even though they say it’s a socialized medicine, but in order to get the proper medical treatment, you need to pay money. And a lot of these kids, they come from very poor families. Some of them live in foster homes. That’s how we started it, to help these kids to make sure that they get proper medical attention, to make sure that the virus does not progress in their bodies.

Jay Ruderman:

How do you talk to people, your peers and friends who are in the world of making money? And when you tell them, “Listen, I think I’m happier helping people,” does it fall on deaf ears or do people understand what you’re doing?

Yuriy Boyechko:

Once they try it and they see the results of the good deeds, they get hooked on it. And that’s one of my foundations of everything we do is to have very clear communication with every donor. So I want to make sure everyone who follows us, they know exactly what we’re doing. That’s why we are updating our social media every two hours with the reports of what’s going on on the ground. So once you partner with us, you will know exactly. And once the people see the power of their $1 or the power of their $10,000, it changes them, because something about activism and something about volunteering is that I believe it’s good for your heart, for your health. Physical health. And it just gives people a different look on life once they get involved. It doesn’t matter what kind of cause you are involved, but get involved in something. Just don’t do nine to five, make money and just go on vacation, get yourself involved in something that’s not a material thing and then you would definitely be satisfied.

Jay Ruderman:

Let me talk about the flexibility of Hope For Ukraine. You said that food support is the key to the work that your organization does. How do you meet the needs when they’re constantly shifting and impacted by where Russia is operating?

Yuriy Boyechko:

Hello everyone. I just would like to take this time to say thank you to all our donors because of your generosity. We started purchasing food for Ukraine for 2023. In this container, there’s almost 20 tons of food that’s going to Ukraine to feed thousands of families. We got instant noodles here, we got canned meat, we got soup, we got rice, we got cereal. Thank you so much for generosity. This year we plan to feed over a million families in Ukraine. Last year we provided groceries to over half a million, and this year we plan to double this. So thank you so much for standing with Ukraine, thank you for your support of Hope For Ukraine, and we wish you happy 2023. Thank you.

We have the areas where we always serve. We have the communities that we know that these people cannot survive unless they get food supplies, hygiene products from us. So we have the permanent towns where we send out humanitarian vans once a week, once in two weeks, depends on. And just to give you an idea, our food kit can sustain a family of four up to 10 days as far as the supply. So what they getting will last them for at least 10 days, seven days at least. And then for example, when the big attacks, remember when there was a big attack on the hospital in Kiev on Children’s Hospital during the summer. So when you have instances like that, then we activate our resources in that particular region extra. Go overdrive, and then we trying to respond there. But basically our main area of operations is frontline towns. I’m talking about Sumer region all the way across, and then also we do a lot of work with internal displaced.

In Ukraine, I think last time I checked, we have about three million internal displaced people. So these are the people … Because we have a center that we run in Lviv, Ukraine that right now I think we have 58 people who live there. Some of the folks that live there been there for two years because we cannot find them permanent place to stay. So there’s millions of these people. They still live in a school gyms, in community centers and all they have to their name is the mattress or bed and the suitcase. We do also events in towns where we operate from Lviv, where we do events for internal displaced people, where we give them food, everything else they need.

And we also involved a lot in children’s programs for these internal displaced families because most of them, they’re single mothers and they have kids that they’re raising. They have no money, no means to provide any type of activity for these kids outside of school. And just so you understand, most of the kids in Ukraine, very small percentage do in person studying. A lot of it is virtual, and virtual right now because of the energy crisis … So just to understand, right now in Ukraine, as we speak, blackouts all across Ukraine, it’s about 10 to 15 hours daily. No matter where you are. I’m not even talking about crazy areas in the front line. Talking about big cities like Kiev, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odessa. You have hours upon hours that people have no electricity. So you can understand the damage that is done to children in their educational process, in their everyday life where they cannot do nothing. Because if you live in an apartment building, and that’s the reason why we’re trying to bring as many of these solar generators as possible, because they can be used on the ninth floor. The mother can put this solar panel on a balcony, they can plug in. There’s so many different needs there that sometimes I get overwhelmed because I don’t know what to respond to. We are trying to do what we can with resources we got.

Jay Ruderman:

The needs seem overwhelming, and with Hope For Ukraine, do you work with other organizations? For example, I used to sit on the board of the joint distribution committee, which works in Ukraine. There’s so many different organizations that are there. Do you coordinate so that, for example, when you’re delivering meals, that the needs are met for the town that you’re going into so that there aren’t people that are left hungry there?

Yuriy Boyechko:

So we work with many different organizations. For example, for about two years we partnered with World Central Kitchen. They actually provided meals to all the people stayed in our refugee center. So it was a great partnership. They would cook meals and then they would deliver to our center and we would feed these people twice a day with the meals that they would cook. But as far as on the ground, we have, like I said, over 100 different organizations that are community-based organizations. And that’s what I like because they know the area very well.

We get a lot of requests from people in the west. “Yeah, I want to go volunteer, I want to go deliver aid to frontline.” But it’s very dangerous unless you are local, unless you know what are you doing, and unless you know these basements where people live, you cannot be really effective.

So in every town we have … The people who actually live there, these organizations, they’re part of the community. So when we’re targeting that and we give them let’s say 500 food kits, I know that these guys will go and scavenge in the basements and they will find these families that live in the basements. And I know that these 500 kids will hit households that need it the most. And that’s why we’ve been so effective in having very small percent. We don’t have a lot of waste. So basically everything that comes in, just to give you an idea right now, every container we sent to Ukraine with humanitarian aid, Ukrainian law, we have 90 days to distribute that aid. So there’s no such thing as things sitting on the warehouse going nowhere. So as soon as it comes to Ukraine, we already line up the volunteers, and we know we have to clear those 20 tons and give … And everyone who receives, they have to sign off on what they got, because in the end of each month we have to report to Ukrainian authorities that everything has to be distributed.

Jay Ruderman:

I think that when you talk about knowing the region, or knowing the village that you’re going into, I had the opportunity to visit Ukraine twice a long time ago, but I remember visiting an older woman outside of Zhytomyr, and she was living in a house with a dirt floor, with no indoor plumbing, with an outhouse, no source of heat other than the organization I was involved with was bringing her gas, a cylinder to heat her hot water. I think unless you’re from a particular place and the place and the people and you know how they live, I think that you’re not going to be as effective. I understand what you’re saying, that you’re working with people that they know exactly where people are living and exactly what they’re going through.

Yuriy Boyechko:

And that’s the key. Just to give you one example, that story is sticking my head all the time. Last week I get this video from one of our partners there. So they basically take the food kit and they take two loaves of bread, and they go to this village and from the video I see that they cannot even drive the car because it’s up the hill and the snow. So they walk in with this food and two loaves of bread.

So this 85-year-old lady meets them at the front of the gate, she takes them inside of her home, she takes them into this kitchen and the house looks exactly like what you described before. And when they put these two loaves of bread and the food kit on her table, when she looks at these two loaves of bread, she just start crying uncontrollably. Because she probably haven’t received any aid for a long time. And for her to understand that no matter where she lives, how far is from a real world, somebody went there and found her, this is what’s making a difference, and this what’s energizing these volunteers. I get asked this question, “Why these guys keep doing this?” It’s because events like this, I spoke to this team, they’re like, “Listen, we want to find more of these ladies like this, because when we did something small like that, it’s priceless.”

Jay Ruderman:

You’ve obviously experienced it, but I also have seen the volunteers on the ground in these very difficult areas really know that they’re changing lives and they see it every day.

But I want to get back to a point that you made previously about overhead and how when you built Hope For Ukraine, you wanted people to know that when they donate to the organization that the money was going to go to help people and not to go for too much overhead. And where did you get that? Because that’s something that I’ve also experienced, and sometimes you get pushed back from organizations. So talk a little bit about that. About what you were trying to accomplish and why you thought that was important.

Yuriy Boyechko:

Everything that nonprofit get as far as monetary donations from public, it’s intended for recipients. It’s not intended for … You do have to run the organization, but the percentage has to be under 10%. The admin cost. And what I’m talking about is you can have a food kit … And I’ve seen this firsthand. There’s two ways you can distribute the food kit. You can have the food kit, put it in your hand and say, “Hey, go deliver the food kit.” Boom, it’s done. This is most effective way.

But there’s other way. You can get the food kit, you can bring in all the volunteers and you can put them through three day training. How do you deliver food kit? How do you do this? You spend all that money on this training. Sometimes there are certain areas we don’t have time to have our printed bags with our logos. On the other hand, you can have the red tape around your operation say, “Hey, you cannot deliver anything unless everybody have your logos, have your vests, have your tents set up.” So these type of things, which is good, but it’s at the cost of that food kit, because in order to get the badges for everybody, set up the tent, you got to spend money on that.

So I feel like especially in the crisis areas, when it comes to rebuilding and stuff, yeah, I believe you need all the conferences, meetings and stuff like that to plan for big project. But when you’re talking about emergency relief, it has to be quick. It has to be very efficient, where everything that people give to you, you put it right back into the hands of those who need it. And I think working with the organizations that are part of that community, because they see the pain that the members of the community go through, that’s why they want to respond as efficient as quick as possible.

Sometimes you get the report of 120 pictures. I was like, “Guys, if you don’t have to send me 120 pictures. I believe you. Just send me a few.” But that’s the kind of attitude, because these people are living through that pain and they want to make sure that we know that they did the right thing to report it back. So that’s why keeping the cost down is very important for the sake of the donors, and for the sake of the mission. Because unless you are good stewards of the money people entrusted you with, you cannot really grow and you cannot really call yourself a real nonprofit if 50% of that go to admin cost.

Jay Ruderman:

Let me ask you another question about the context of the war. In 2022 there was worldwide focus on Ukraine and a lot of people were giving money and trying to really focus on helping the Ukrainian people, but the war has gone through ebbs and flows. How do you sustain the momentum when Ukraine is not the first thing in the news, and not the first thing that people are paying attention to?

Yuriy Boyechko:

We have to work seven times harder now than what we did in 2022 as far as sustaining the same level of support for people in Ukraine. Just to give you an idea, when the war started full-scale war in 2022, we could have collect one container, 20 tons of humanitarian aid within a week. So back then we would send about four containers each month out of New Jersey here to Ukraine. And it was all coming from the local area. People donating here and stuff like that. Now we’re sending about one container a month of aid, but we have to collect stuff all over United States.

So basically, for example, last week we had a family up in Connecticut. They say, “Hey, we have a bunch of clothes here that we want to donate to people in Ukraine,” so we had to send someone there to pick it up to bring it here. Then we had one business person in Washington state say, “Hey, I want to donate some food.” So we actually had to get a truck to bring it here. So right now, for us to keep supply going and aid going is we have to find aid anywhere around United States. There’s still a lot of people who are passionate who want to help Ukraine. It’s just for us as an organization, we need to spend more time and resources to find these folks and put all together in order to keep aid going and keep conversation about Ukraine alive, because I feel like right now, as far as the situation on the ground for civilians, they’re in much worse shape than it was 2022.

Jay Ruderman:

Let’s talk about that a little bit, because in 2020 it seemed like everyone was flying the Ukrainian flag, supporting the Ukrainian people and now Ukraine has become a little bit of a divisive issue. What happened?

Yuriy Boyechko:

Politics got involved. I think politicians took Ukraine and they start using it for their own benefits. So whatever party is becoming more … Like in 2022, it was a humanitarian issue. Everybody was supporting this no matter what party you’re on or what you support. Now, a lot of people, they took it and they’re trying to use for their political gains. But it’s not good. I think people not studying the history, and that’s why they’re making this mistake. Because what’s happening right now is exactly what happened in previous century during World War Two. It’s exactly the same. We have a crazy man who thinks he has some crazy ideas and he’s not going to stop until somebody stop him with force.

Jay Ruderman:

When you talk about Ukrainian people, there’s two distinct populations. There are those who are living in Ukraine and those that are living abroad. How do you look at those two populations, and how would you suggest that each of them be served?

Yuriy Boyechko:

My heart goes out to people who are in Ukraine. I do understand people who left and I wish them all the best, but I think the countries that they left to, whether it’s United States or Europe, I think they have enough social programs to sustain them. My heart goes out to people who are still in the country. And we still have almost 30 million people who are still there, and in my mind, these are the bravest people on the planet earth.

Because everybody could leave the country in 2022. If you could, you need to have a passport, you just show up at the border, say, “My name is Joe Black,” or whatever, and they let you into Europe. But these people who stayed back are the people who are actually holding Ukraine together still. Those guys who went in and start fighting and didn’t chicken out and didn’t run out, that’s why I have so much respect to them.

We have one of these … He’s a dentist. He does a lot of charitable dental work for internal displaced people, but the guy donates 50% of his monthly salary, which is not big, to Ukrainian army. Just to understand. Every day, every week, thousands of weapons and FPV drones are bought through donations of Ukrainians who live inside of the country to the local organizations because they rather eat less, they rather have less clothes, but they don’t want to leave Ukraine. They want to stay in a homeland. They want to stay in the country and rebuild this country.

And that’s why these are my heroes, these guys, those 30 million people. Because to live through the hell that they live in, every day … You got to understand, if you have air rates every day, you go to bed, three o’clock, you got to get up, you got to go hide. You stay in the basement five o’clock and then you have to wake up and you have to go to work at 9:00 A.M. And it’s daily. Imagine yourself if you could not have a proper rest each and every night for almost three years, and they’re still standing. So that’s why I have so much respect for them.

Jay Ruderman:

Where do you want to see Hope Ukraine in the next five to 10 years?

Yuriy Boyechko:

I want to see Hope For Ukraine to really become an agent of change and innovation as far as nonprofits go in Ukraine. I want us to grow. I’m not even talking about financial, as far as the processes. I want to make sure that we utilize all of the tech achievements that we have as a humanity to bring aid faster and quicker to people, to use less human resources, but use all the tech tools that we have and help rebuild Ukraine. Because I do believe in the end of the day, Ukraine is going to be one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. I do believe as far as the democracy-wise, I hope that Ukraine is going to be next United States, as long as United States stays in democratic country.

And as far as development goes, economically-wise, I would like to see Ukraine to be like Singapore, where the infrastructure and everything is … We have no more nuclear power plants, that we have solar plants, that we diversify everything, and all the people who been suffering all this time, how long this war is going to take that they would be rewarded by living in much better society and their kids live in prosperous country. I want to play, as an organization, a big part in that helping rebuild Ukraine.

Jay Ruderman:

Thank you Yuriy, for being my guest on All About Change, and I’d like to end with saying Slava Ukraini.

Yuriy Boyechko:

[Foreign language 00:28:46].

Jay Ruderman:

Today’s episode was produced by Tani Levitt and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website allaboutchangepodcast.com.

If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We really appreciate it.

All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation.

That’s it for now. I’m Jay Ruderman and we’ll see you next time on All About Change.