My family dragged me away from my screens for a little walk yesterday, and I stopped to take this photo in a nearby vineyard as I had never seen a bunch of green and purple grapes together before. It is the perfect symbol for what I feel like at the moment: for every bit of bad news, there is also a bit of good news. For every positive step forward, there is a negative step back. It feels like I am working on several different projects at once, not sure which one to give the most time too, and as a result, only making baby steps of progress on all fronts. But perhaps that is the right answer for the moment.
I have been sending messages back and forth with Ukrainian refugees in Austria since March. Hence, by August, I have thousands of chats in my phone in both Telegram and Messenger, and to a much lesser extent, WhatsApp. I often come across useful information, such as complete step by step instructions in Russian on how to apply for the monthly child benefit which Ukrainians in Austria are now eligible for. I then immediately want to text 1000 people, which is obviously time consuming. So I am really angry with myself that I didn’t set up a group earlier. But better late than never.
So late this week, Thursday I think? (it’s all a blur), I sit down and try create a Telegram private group, because I don’t want it to be public (spam and advertising), and I want to have at least chatted with each member once like I do when they send me photos of their Hofer card purchases or ask me to send them a card. But there is really no easy way to invite everyone without having to click on every contact / text in my inbox, and you can imagine how many Olena, Iryna, Tetiana, Nataliia and Yuliia I see when I open that list. So I start clicking on them, trying to add them to the group. But you max out at 200. And I probably have more like 1,200. Ok. So then you try to send an invite link, and you click on a bunch of names, but it’s super hard to figure out who you already invited or didn’t (the inbox doesn’t stay static in chronological order, unfortunately). So I try that. And then suddenly a Telegram bot tells me I am spam, and stops letting me text people with whom I have already chatted in the past, as we haven’t saved each others phone numbers. Basically, a few of those contacts must have reported me as spam because they got a link with no explanation (my bad, clearly, I suck so much at tech stuff), and now I cannot use Telegram fully until this evening; you are stopped for 3 days. How lovely.
Then I move to Messenger, where I also have surely 1000+ chats, as my first Hofer card clients were from a Facebook mommy group. Same thing happens there. When you send too many messages, too quickly, it stops you from sending more. So I have to invite the women in waves, which is really time consuming and annoying. I even tweeted at the head of Messenger at Meta, who did write me to tell me her team would look at it, and suggested I start a Facebook group instead (lol). To be honest, I think all the platforms are somehow equally terrible, and the only reason I chose Telegram is because all the big Ukraine-in-Austria groups are there, so I wanted to choose a platform that most Ukrainians in Austria are on. I have received messages on Telegram from teens and grandfathers, hence felt like the most widely-used solution. None of them are on Twitter, so you feel like a translator between two worlds that don’t really speak to each other, and the barrier here is more than just language, it’s preferred platform too.
Good news is despite all these headaches, I am now the admin of a chat with currently 999 Ukrainians in Austria. We have already had many fruitful discussions: how to apply for child benefit, which charities are saying what about the paperwork you need to include, where free food is being distributed by charities in which region, and how to sign up, legal contacts, medical contacts, how to find a translator, how to find a kindergarten, etc. It has been a good first few days. A lovely volunteer, an older woman originally from Ukraine but a long time Tirolean, is my co-admin, and she knows all the tricks. She taught me how to add a bot that does this that and the other, and how we can delete problematic messages. I am humbled. I know none of this stuff. I only stepped in yesterday when one woman went after another woman on the basis of nationality and who needed refuge from war more — will not tolerate any finger pointing or racism of that sort and made it clear we are here to HELP EACH OTHER.
So far, so good. I think I will look back and be happy I put in the effort, but I really wish I had some 19 year old tech wizz helping me because tech is really not my thing, right up there with calling Austrian bureaucracies (also so not my thing!). Should have started the group in March but I had no time and also no idea my “volunteering” would last so long or feel so intense. I hope maybe in a few days I will have managed to invite all the contacts in my phone, and then I can use the group as a tool to share useful information fast. My thinking was the child benefit payment will make a real impact on family budgets, it is worth taking the time to make sure as many parents as possible apply for the help.
A local paper even wrote about my Telegram drama:
In the meantime, we have continued to distribute Hofer cards. This week alone I sent out several thousand Euros worth of €50 Hofer cards (I think the final count was 80-something cards). Now I don’t have any money left. As soon as a card comes in or I receive funds on PayPal, I buy a card, and it goes out by mail or hand delivery.
I now have an empty pile of close to 100 envelopes still waiting for €50 cards; they are all addressed and ready to go. I finally ran out of stamps (a generous individual gave me hundreds of stamps a month or so ago and they lasted really a while!) and envelopes. It is a horrible feeling when the Ukrainians ask “how long until my card arrives?” and of course I have no idea, right, because I have no idea if people will keep donating (or not), so I just ask for patience and understanding.
There were some huge victories this week, and I think it is so important to celebrate them. We found a donor who generously paid for an entire year of tuition for Amalia. €1,800. Just like that. Amazing. Amalia’s mom wrote me she herself worked 24/7 in Ukraine, did all sorts of fundraisers for kids with disabilities, never in a million years thought she would have to be in the position to ask for help, and yet…that’s the thing. It can happen to every single one of us. No one knows what tomorrow will bring.
I also got this wonderful message when I wrote Tatiana this week to invite her to my Telegram chat.
Yesterday, I received a very concerning message from a volunteer about a woman and her husband who just arrived to Vienna from Mariupol and she is 37 weeks pregnant. Immediately, after I posted the message, offers to help poured in. From official sources (to make phone calls, ensure cash would be provided), from private sources (newborn clothes and accessories donations), and from a generous private donor (not living in Austria, I should say) who has sent generous cash payments to several Ukrainian families in need. I then had a lovely chat with the volunteer, who has her own group, has housed many families, completely understands a day in the life of one of us, and she kindly asked me if she could help ME in anyway, completely blown away by how fast the offers to help rolled in. That is the magic of Twitter, but I never know in which cases it will happen. Sometimes everyone wants to help, sometimes, no one. And I think, if I understood correctly, the volunteer found me because I created the Telegram group.
Other families wrote me about having no money for food and being in fairly rural corners of Austria, we always try to fast track those envelopes. Some kind people have jumped in on multiple occasions to finance and send cards directly to the “most needy next two addresses”. So grateful for that. Of course the website still has a long queue despite the amazing number of cards Mario has sent out recently. Hundreds and hundreds. Mario and team have ordered, stuffed and sent from Graz 2,334 €50 Hofer cards to date. Just incredible. It’s actually really staggering if you stop and think about it. If we could visualise all those groceries, how many football stadiums would they fill?
My eldest kid has been working on putting us together an Instagram page (work very much still in progress), in the hope of attracting new donors to the project, so I have been looking at the old grocery cart photos, and watching the fruit seasons change, from strawberries in early summer to July watermelons and the apricots and plums of late.
I have been looking for a lawyer in Vienna who can advise on housing and registration for a group of residents who reached out to me separately on Friday evening with the same concerns. A mom wrote me from Lower Austria asking for help to buy Aptamil, saying she has only six days of baby formula left. I asked for her address so I could order some; she didn’t reply yet. I sent gas money to the kind Austrian who drove a Ukrainian family halfway across the country on Tuesday so they could move. He sent me the exact receipt, did not want a penny more. I sent him €69.35. I have to send money to a mom in Steyr who used to live near us, knitted a jumper for my husband’s grandson, then moved away, is now in a dorm, having moved out from her Austrian host who changed her mind about hosting. I got an unexpected call yesterday from a woman from Baden who was already at my local bus stop, coming to collect used clothes from my girls. She never told me what time she was coming. Good thing I was home. She needs a used phone. I said I don’t have one now, but I will ask around. She never got a Hofer card yet. Ok, please send me your address. Her daughter was in hospital yesterday with a sprained ankle, took all day. I nod. Yes, I know, everyone is on holiday, the doctors and nurses too. A mom writes me whose daughter has had three major surgeries in Vienna. I don’t have extra money, I explain, but if someone wants to help you directly I will let you know. So far, nothing. I have to remind Pasha to meet another Ukrainian on Tuesday on his way to volleyball practice because Pasha does have an extra phone and that family needs it. I received two Libro €20 cards from a generous reader. Text a mother of four living near St. Pölten. She would be very happy to use them; her older two will be in school in the fall.
And so it goes. On and on and on and you try not to lose your mind. Not too spend too much time on any one thing. To stay on top of it all. My head is often spinning.
In terms of recommended reading, this is a horrific story now translated into English and I believe every word of it. The world should know. Many of the children taken by Russia from Ukraine into Russia have living relatives in Ukraine who are searching for them. Forced transfer of children to another country is also a form of genocide.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for your continued support, without which NONE of this would be possible. Thank you for caring and not looking away. It is very easy to look away, I am fully aware. I hear how conversation topics get shifted away from things no longer the crisis of the moment, no longer fashionable to discuss, to more pleasant, acceptable topics, like where everyone spend their holidays and the new restaurant have you tried it yet?
All I can say is €1,000 donated to us is a week’s worth of self-selected groceries for 20 Ukrainian refugee families in Austria. Quite an impact, I think.
Credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay super easy two clicks or Bank transfer (IBAN): https://cards-for-ukraine.at/donate
PayPal (Tanja uses directly): PayPal.Me/groceries4Ukraine
Or please feel free to send us cards, either to the address on the website above or if you are in Vienna I even have a teenage courier this month and will happily send him to collect cards and/or cash anywhere Wiener Linien reaches at your convenience.
DANKE!