History of the emergence of the CHARITABLE FOUNDATION «KHARKIVIANS TOGETHER».
I am Victor Monakhov, the Chairman of the CHARITABLE FOUNDATION «KHARKIVIANS TOGETHER». On February 24, 2022 my life, lives of my relatives, lives of my friends, lives of our city of Kharkov, lives of our country Ukraine have changed forever once the full-scale war had begun.
The war found me at home in my hometown of Kharkov, which is just 30 kilometers from the border with Russia. Until that day I was a private entrepreneur developing my own business. I had the opportunity to pack my things, take my family and relocate to a safer place, however I did not make that move. I saw fear, panic, despair in the eyes of people, in the eyes of my fellow countrymen. No one was prepared for such events, and is it even possible to be prepared for such things? So I decided to stay in town to support and help everyone I could and who needed it most.
From the first days of the invasion I became a volunteer, and after a week we had already organized a whole team – there were already seven of, we had a large warehouse and a truck. Then we began to help the most vulnerable people: the elderly, people with disabilities, large families and single elderly people. We helped with food and medicines. And we also managed to set up kitchens and provide them with food for the police, medics, firefighters and everyone else who was homeless at the time, for people who had to hide from shelling in bomb shelters.
Now it is difficult to estimate how many tons of food we distributed in Kharkov in three months, but I know for a fact that it was more than a hundred tons. At the beginning of the war we spent about five hundred thousand hryvnias of our own money on food, and then the first truckloads of humanitarian aid began to arrive. They are still coming and so we are very grateful to you.
The first weeks of the war were stressful and panic-stricken for everyone, no one had any idea what to do and how to act. So we tried to work effectively and acted result-oriented to reach as many people as possible who needed help. With time everyone came to their senses a little bit and our algorithms began to appear. We began to ask for volunteer certificates, for legal requisites, so it became necessary to formalize our charitable organization. Now our charitable organization CHARITABLE FOUNDATION «KHARKIVIANS TOGETHER» works officially.