FinUA two years later. How We Started. How it`s Going.

As a disclaimer, nobody thought we would end up here after two years. When we created FinUA, it was a volunteer project we thought would last for about two weeks. Maybe a month.

Before the full-scale invasion back in 2022, I knew that something would happen, subconsciously. I might be cynical, but I had no problem imagining that something like that might happen.

The initial rush of adrenaline going into your head when you hear the news such as your country is invaded is hard to describe. You feel agitated and eager to do something. You start by calling and texting your friends and family to check if they are ok.

Luckily, I was in Finland for a long time already when it happened.

Locus of control

The internal drive to do something was very strong. A very important lesson I learned in therapy is what help is. Help is indeed help when it is:

• asked for
• given in a way that truly helps a person

How do you approach these things when the war started? Well, surely I cannot stop the war. So I asked myself: “What is within my locus of control?” It is a term that denotes the area of your actual control.

Why information is important

The idea was very simple, really: to create a single website with all the information that is needed for Ukrainians to come to Finland. I created it because I know how tough it is to come to a new foreign country, especially if you have not traveled before.

I came to Finland back in 2014. I was 18, I had no idea what Finland is like. I came to study here, and that coincidentally was my very first trip abroad. I also had very little money to start my life here for the next couple of months. When you are moving blindly like that, you have no clue how much confusion, rumors, and “broken phone” info there is out there.

It is nerve-wracking to move to a foreign country. Add the fact that you do not speak the language, you do not know the system, you virtually know nothing about it. You have to pack your belongings, take your kids, and run. You have two or three days to make a potentially life-altering decision. Every detail and day counts.

The idea was to simplify and make it as concrete as possible. Single-door principle, where people can find everything. The information existed but was not translated, not full, and in over 50 different places. By the way, I am not exaggerating about 50 different places. De facto some processes were not exactly by the book, even when dealing with state organizations and projects.

To this day, there is no other source but FinUA that accumulates all the information in one place for Ukrainians.

One idea formed a team

The first day was me creating the layout and adding basic information: mostly what I managed to find on Instagram about Finland. This is a whole other story that I already described earlier in the blogpost.

After the second day, I started promoting it: on my Instagram page first. Then I found some Ukrainian groups.

Very soon some volunteers joined me. Andrey Sytnyk would be the one who was one of the first people to join and make some of the biggest contributions. I consider him my cofounder to this day, even though he left the project in 2022 November.

We started small, but on point: the first info was about how to come to Finland, find accommodation, and register at the police station. We approached it in an agile way. A week was like a sprint and it had a designated theme: it started with transportation, then registration, then housing.

Approach it like a journalist

Early March we had an onboarding and the process was defined. Mind you, I started 24th of February 2022, so it was two weeks into the project.

We had a true information verification process: from draft to verification, to editing, to translation, and publishing.

The Q&A was the actual Q&A

I was helping at the help center, where I was writing down the questions, which we later addressed on the website. It is very easy to assume what people need — much more important to address the real needs.

The best code is the code you do not have to write yourself

The website itself is just a simple Notion page. It was done intentionally that way. Notion is simple for people to use. We needed to have an opportunity to onboard pretty much any volunteer with no prior knowledge of anything IT-related, or even with mediocre computer skills. It was optimized to deliver information fast and with minimal effort.

Still to this day, we are using it, even though we are moving towards custom NextJS implementation.

I guess, it is serious. I guess we have to do it now

It was never intended to be anything long-lasting. But after a few months and some large traffic, we realized it was time to do this properly. With 3–7k visitors per week, the conclusion was “I guess, It is serious. I guess we have to do it now”. We registered FinUA as an association on 10.07.2023. Looking back, I wish I could do it faster.

Registering an association gives you certain benefits.

Non-profits are like startups, really

It is very popular to oppose startups and non-profits. But the truth is, they are way more similar, in many ways. Your non-profit target audience is your product-market fit. You need finances to scale. You need a clear value proposition. It is very much like a startup in that way: if you are everything, you are nothing, really. I believe the important thing is to find a way to help that is natural and familiar to you: I am a web engineer, so I made a website and then a web app. It is important to help with something concrete well.

Your non-profit is built in your image

You build it in your image: just like small startups are built in the image of their founders, non-profits are the same. The way I sometimes introduce FinUA is “There are companies, and the are tech companies, there are non-profits and FinUA is a tech non-profit”. We built it like a tech startup. Surprise, that is because we are tech people. We build it fast: that is because I am impatient.

Collaboration as one of our main principles

FinUA wants to do one thing very well: become the best at dispatching people to the correct place, specialist, information etc. To do that, we want to collaborate with as many NGOs, specialists, and impact companies, as we can.

Always a group effort

There is one interview I was recently watching with Yuval Noah Harari, where he mentioned that humanity thrived not because of the individual smart people, but because we are the best at collaboration.

That is why I do not like it when people describe FinUA as a single-woman project. It is very far from it. FinUA has attracted a lot of incredible mission-driven specialists-volunteers. I sometimes think about it and feel confused about how these educated and accomplished people listen to me and my leadership. And most of our achievements so far can be attributed to them!

2 years of FinUA

I always feel conflicted about FinUA anniversary. On one hand, it is incredible that I was able to work on this project for so long. On the other, it marks the years of war in my home country. We try to look at it as a way for us to stand up to the terror.

Start with Why

Simon Sinek is somebody I have been watching recently quite a bit. He is talking about why.

Back in 2018, I traveled to Tallinn with a friend. We went there to the Fotografiska museum and got lucky. It was an exhibition of James Nachtwey, with Mr. Nachtwey giving a press tour himself. For those who do not know, he is a war photographer. The things he has seen were morbid. But he maintains absolutely calm and clear composure. I asked him how he managed to do it despite all the things he had seen, to which he responded “I have my place in this world”. Probably a corny thing to say, but these words were transformative to me. FinUA is something I do because “I have my place in this world”. That is why.

Always ask yourself: am I doing some stupid sh*t?

I remember seeing this slide in one tech presentation at one point. It is easy to get caught doing something that ultimately does not help your mission. We certainly did some. It is important to sit down and evaluate from time to time.

It is the journey or the destination?

Throughout two years, he answered thousands of questions, worked through a huge amount of information, made dozens of new partnerships, onboarded legal, emotional support, and medical volunteers, built software, registered, and got our first small grant, and hosted two FinUA events.

So, what is next? What is the destination? And is it the journey I like or the destination?

It`s the company. I am grateful for the fact that this journey led me to meet so many incredibly supportive people: people, who are true heroes, whose hearts are in the right place. They are the people who make all the ups and downs worth it.

Next for us is testing and improving software. More grants. It is so cool to be telling you this two years later!