History

A few words from the founder

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Already at the beginning of the war in Ukraine I started to support the people in Ukraine directly and indirectly.

In the beginning, I helped organise demonstrations against the war in the cities of Bielefeld and Herford. I have a lot of connections with Ukraine and I have many friends, acquaintances and family members there. That's why I helped people from Ukraine to find a safe escape route and transport to Germany.

As soon as they arrived here in the Herford district and in Bielefeld, I looked for private accommodation for these people.


Word got around very quickly that I could help from Germany and so more and more people asked for my help and were able to successfully escape from Ukraine. I called in more and more acquaintances, friends as well as their contacts in order to be able to offer the Ukrainians possibilities of accommodation.


My contact details were very diligently distributed throughout Ukraine and dozens of families and individuals, most of whom I did not even know, contacted me every day just 2 weeks after the war began.


Since I did not refuse my support to any person, families and individuals are now contacting me almost continuously every day via six different messengers (WhatsApp, email, SMS, Telegram, Signal, phone).


In order to be able to deal with all this, I have duplicated my phone number and my partner now helps me answer the many calls for help from Ukraine via a parallel mobile phone as an assistant and contact person. However, I am also contacted by many Ukrainians who are stuck in other countries or who are now somewhere in Germany and cannot get anywhere.


Because I helped out for a while at the town hall and the social welfare office in Bielefeld, the employees of the city of Bielefeld know me and register me as a contact person for hundreds of refugees.


In the first 4-6 weeks of the war, together with my helpers, I was able to accommodate more than 500 people in private households throughout Germany alone. I forwarded many of them directly to the ZUEs and refugee homes.


When more and more work came my way and I could no longer manage it alone and from home, I applied to the DRK and was given an office in the DRK Herford building. I was able to work from there and, parallel to my voluntary help at the DRK, I could inform people about safe evacuation routes and transport routes and organise accommodation for the refugees. I advised and consulted many people every day. In addition to the work at the DRK, I helped twice a week in the ZUE Herford in consultation hours as an interpreter.


More and more people all over Ukraine distributed my number and actively used it, and I realised that these people currently needed much more help. Therefore, I decided to give priority to helping the people in Ukraine. Many needed psychological support from my helpers and me, even on the phone. We looked for ways and possibilities to get people out of the hotly contested zones and occupied areas of Ukraine.


Every day the number of our helpers and supporters grew and we became a community that not only transcended cities, but already transcended countries.


More and more people turned to me to help them or their families. However, the work at the DRC limited me too much and so I joined the NGO "Be an Angel" and looked for possibilities to become even freer and more unrestricted in order to be able to help more people.

For the NGO "Be an Angel" I coordinated relief supplies to Ukraine, did fundraising and organised and coordinated evacuations from different regions of Ukraine. However, the possibilities of the NGO "Be an Angel" were also limited and so I made contact with other NGOs in parallel and also coordinated evacuations for other NGOs, such as for the NGO "Road to Relief" or "Humanfrontaid".


At some point, the moment came when I decided to found my own NGO in order to be able to act and help even more independently.

Today I work with six other NGOs, I am the president of the NGO Helpchain and I help Ukraine and Ukrainians in many different ways. I also coordinate evacuations from Odessa via Moldova to Germany, Austria and Italy.