Our Vision: To Build the Bridge between the West and Ukraine
We have been working in Ukraine for two years to reach this point. Delivering 5.5 million dollars in aid across the country and have made meaningful impact on the lives of over 250,000 Ukrainians in this period. Nothing short of a miracle for our small team of two, our accountant, and many, many volunteers throughout this chain.
We are not the most well-funded organization nor the most experienced in the space of charity work. But our impact cannot be mistaken. We punch above our weight because of the system of management we have decided to employ—a product of our constraints, our goals, and our unwavering principles.
Today, I want to talk about what this is leading towards. We are trying to build the bridge that connects the West and Ukraine. A bridge of resources, ideas, and talent. One that is rooted in a foundation of unquestionable integrity and built equally from both sides of the equation. A bridge that will allow a flow of foreign aid into the country with efficiency, effectiveness, and trust that it will be used in the spirit it was given.
Dniester River Canyon, Ukraine
The problem we have seen over and over in Ukraine is that foreign groups, while they have resources, are extremely slow to achieve anything in Ukraine. If the goal is to use resources to help the country, then speed and bureaucratic inefficiency are JUST as much of an enemy as theft and corruption! What’s the difference between money that arrives quickly but 40% is stolen versus money that is 100% put to trackable use but 40% of it is wasted in staffing and bureaucratic delays? In my opinion, they are the same.
There needs to be a better way to handle this process, and the issue is trust.
On the Western side, it’s hard to hand over money to a foreign state known for a culture of corruption and just trust that it is going to be spent well. There are stakeholders that care about how the money is spent. As a result, massive bureaucratic operations are established. Procedures are put in place to verify and check every single part of the process, and naturally, Western employees and companies will be brought in to conduct the procedure. But this is too slow! It takes months, if not years, to establish efficient processes within a foreign country, to figure out who to work with, how to get everybody to coordinate, etcetera, etcetera. We know this very well. We hear complaints day and night.
On the Ukrainian side, they need to receive aid quickly. They are in an existential war. Invasion from a foreign country that wants to not just obliterate their nation, but also destroy the liberal world order. The need for urgency, effectiveness, and efficiency is, quite literally, life or death for an entire nation. The problem is that they’re seen with skepticism, have been separate from the Western world for a very long time, and, as a result, operate dramatically differently. And because of this, if they ask for aid and it’s not met, do they wait one year for those requests to be satisfied? Or should they just proceed anyway with their own extremely constrained budgets? Can’t wait forever. It’s literally life or death. Solutions need to be made quickly.
The issue is trust. And this is precisely what we are aiming to tackle.
We have been in this war since day 1, and we have seen it all. The missionaries and the mercenaries. The beauty of the human spirit and the dread of the most disappointing actions. Through this crucible, we have learned how to identify those who are true missionaries with integrity and built a network of these individuals, from the determined volunteers on the ground to the governmental leaders in the Ukrainian government. And it’s through this network of partners that we have managed to achieve everything we have done to date. Yes, we are a two-person team, but through this network, we are hundreds strong. Each acts independently to accomplish the mission, while we at Bird of Light oversee and ensure every step of the process.
It’s how we managed to deliver food to over 90,000 Ukrainians. It’s how we managed to open 15 community centers. It’s how we managed to address water scarcity for over 100,000 civilians. Behind our work is a partnership of individuals, organizations, volunteers, government officials, and businessmen. All with a shared understanding that we are doing this for the sake of a higher purpose. In that shared purpose, we have trust, and in that trust, we get the job done. We have identified who to work with, and we have also identified how to test integrity to find the real missionaries in this war.
That is the innovation we are pioneering at Bird of Light. A system of organization and management that transforms the shape of wartime humanitarian problems into a distributed challenge across hundreds of individuals.
I believe that our next step is to take on government-funded procurement contracts to support Ukraine, which opens the financial bridge between the West and Ukraine. From this bridge, we aim to demonstrate our ability to execute efficiently and effectively to such an extent that we can begin exploring how we can effect change on a greater scale on the challenge of cross-national aid into Ukraine. If this can be substantially improved, we believe that this will not only save lives but also shape the future of what kind of nation Ukraine will become.