Volunteering Stories by Rooshmates — Evacuation of children from war zones
We are continuing to share inspiring stories of our Roosh teammates who are volunteering and helping people survive during the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Meet Liza, Partnership Manager at AI HOUSE. AI HOUSE is an initiative powered by Roosh that focuses on building an AI / ML community in Ukraine.
From the first days of the invasion, Liza actively helped children escape the horrors of war. She cooperated with the Save Ukraine Center for Mutual Assistance, a charitable organization providing humanitarian and evacuation aid for vulnerable people in Ukraine.
Together with the Save Ukraine team, Liza helped evacuate about 38, 000 children from war zones.
Liza’s volunteering story
— Hi, I’m Liza, AI HOUSE Partnership Manager. I love music and playing my guitar. Before the war, together with the team, we were passionately working on building the most powerful AI community in Ukraine. Actually, nothing has changed since then. But when the Russian army invaded our Ukrainian territory again, I found myself in another important role.
I am currently a volunteer in the communications department of Mykola Kuleba’s team. He is the CEO of Save Ukraine and has experience working with internally displaced people since 2014. He coordinates the evacuation of children from hotspots throughout Ukraine, as well as assists families with children.
Our priority now is the evacuation of children from boarding schools, families with children with disabilities, orphans in orphanages / foster families, large families, and families with children in need of palliative care. Since the beginning of the war, we have evacuated more than 38,000 children with their families (including 1,200+ orphans from 22 boarding schools) and resettled them in western Ukraine or abroad. More than 22,500 people received consultations on evacuation, psychological, legal, and humanitarian assistance on our free hotline 0 800 333 129.
What are you doing as a volunteer?
— Every day we evacuate hundreds of children and families from war zones in Ukraine and help them find shelter. I work with the team on communicating and cooperating with Ukrainian and international media. We want to make sure Ukrainians are aware of the possibility of evacuation. And it’s also important that people around the world can quickly receive truthful information about our children during the war.
This is a very cool experience because all the media we communicate with (CNN, BBC News, The Guardian, The Times, ABC News, Vice News, CBC, Global News Canada) are very open and very supportive of us and Ukraine.
What were the challenges you had to face?
— I will tell you about a specific challenge of mine.
It was one of the scariest evenings in my life. My team and I went to the railway station to send about 100 children, some that had disabilities and some were orphans, to the western regions. The train was about to leave and one of the families was late. As soon as the train moved, a frantic crowd rushed towards the turnstiles. Then we realized that the family we were expecting was at the very center of the swarm. Five children and their parents had to be pulled out by their hoods. When the train finally left, we had to make our way through an angry crowd that still had hopes of jumping into the last carriage. Police fired into the air. In response, an automatic queue formed nearby. I stood among hundreds of people and tried not to lose consciousness. At that moment it seemed that it couldn’t get worse, but suddenly we heard two explosions from the Brovary direction near Kyiv. The sky shone with a rich orange color. In the end, I managed to get myself together and get out.
How has your work at AI HOUSE changed since February 24th?
— It has massively changed. We were planning on holding a lot of big events this year, and I truly believe that one day we will return to our road map and actualize these events.
No matter what happens, one of our superpowers is flexibility to any circumstances and changes, the ability to perceive them as an opportunity to look at the ordinary course of work from a new angle.
I am currently actively collaborating with academics in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
I believe that volunteering and working in AI HOUSE create the perfect balance. Volunteering in a state of emergency, and working is a state of prospect and contribution to the country’s recovery. You can’t find a better combination anywhere.
Even under current conditions, we work for the future, discuss and plan joint projects. We trust our defenders, so we don’t stop building ambitious plans. Victory is ours!
To learn more about the activities of Save Ukraine:
→ facebook @SaveUkraine.center
→ twitter: @MykolaKuleba
