All About Change - Yuriy Boyechko - Hope for Ukraine in 2025

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

In 2016, Yuriy Boyechko founded Hope for Ukraine to raise awareness for voices not heard in Ukraine, especially children affected by HIV and AIDS. Providing medical care for children with disabilities as well as food and clothing for families that live in extreme poverty. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Yuriy’s work surged in importance. Today he joins Jay Ruderman to talk about how the work of providing food and material support to those who remain in Ukraine has become harder as public interest in Ukraine has waned in the face of other international affairs. They also discuss the hard work of minimizing overhead costs at a nonprofit and Yuriy’s deep appreciation for the people still living in Ukraine. Episode Chapters (00:00) Intro  (01:50) Why does Yuriy think it's so important that the organizations that are working in Ukraine have a direct connection to the country? (04:07) Ukrainian children living with HIV/AIDS (06:28) The invigorating nature of helping others (07:55) Meeting shifting needs during a war (12:44) Coordinating with other aid groups  (17:50) Minimizing overhead  (21:05) How does Yuriy sustain the momentum three years after the Russian invasion? (24:25) Supporting Ukrainians in Ukraine and abroad  (27:05 ) Where do you want to see Hope Ukraine in the next five to 10 years? (28:38) Goodbye and Outro For video episodes, watch on www.youtube.com/@therudermanfamilyfoundation Stay in touch: X: @JayRuderman | @RudermanFdn LinkedIn: Jay Ruderman | Ruderman Family Foundation Instagram: All About Change Podcast | Ruderman Family Foundation To learn more about the podcast, visit https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/

Welcome to All About Change. Today, my guest is Yuri Boyechko. Yuri is a Ukrainian expat. He came to America to get a degree, and he brought with him memories of Russia's impact on Ukrainian life. He remembered his father in prison for working as a priest. He also remembered president after president

living in Putin's pocket. And in 2016, after Russia annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbass region of Ukraine, Yuri decided to leave behind a career in reality television and founded Hope for Ukraine. Hope for Ukraine provides humanitarian aid to families in need, supports communities, and fosters education in Ukraine.

Since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the organization has been hard at work. They have partnered with local organizations to host summer camps for Ukrainian refugee children in cities across Ukraine, the U.S. and Italy. In May, Hope for Ukraine achieved accreditation by the BBB wise giving Alliance. At the time Boyachko's organization had marked 82 million meals served, 825 individuals were rescued from the war zone, 52 hospitals clinics were provided with essential medical supplies, 1,875 tons of humanitarian aid delivered, 1,544 refugees sheltered, and 600 children weekly attend after-school programs. Wherever there are Ukrainians impacted by Russian aggression, Yuri and Hope for Ukraine

are there, providing the support these people need. Yuri Boyechko, welcome to All About Change, and thank you for being my guest today. Thanks for having me, Jay. Thank you. So I've seen many of your media appearances, and when you talk about hope for Ukraine, you talk about it being by and for Ukrainians, and you emphasize that your organization is on the ground in Ukraine. In addition, you applaud other organizations who is on the ground in Ukraine. In addition, you applaud other organizations who are on the ground in Ukraine. Why do you think it's so important that the organizations that are working Ukraine have a direct connection to the country?

so dire. And unless you have serious boots on the ground operation, you cannot be really effective as organization. And I pride ourselves in having one of the largest volunteering network on the ground in Ukraine. So basically, we are able to purchase the truck full of food somewhere in Europe and get it to our warehouse and leave Ukraine and get it to the frontline towns in a matter of 10 days and distribute that. And that's thanks because of the network we have on the ground. And that's very important because right now the difficulties and the horror that civilians are facing on the ground, it's a matter of a couple of days for them to have food on their table or have nothing to eat. Because some of the areas we go to, there's no supermarkets, there's no regular deliveries

of groceries, so they solely rely on food distribution and humanitarian aid deliveries. So that's why it's very vital to have quick response. And for example, there is a bombing in certain part of Ukraine. We're trying to activate our resources as soon as possible to get aid there within 24 to 48 hours to assist those that's affected. So that's why it's very important for nonprofits who are working in the crisis areas to have a serious presence on the ground to make sure we are effective.

Because in the end of the day, our goal as a nonprofits to solve the issues, right? Not to do conferences, not to do like things that planning strategy meetings, but actually deliver aid. So that's why I think that's very important. As I studied your organization I was shocked to learn about a major issue of children impacted by HIV AIDS. Talk about this issue I guess it's a major issue but I didn't even know that there was a problem in Ukraine. In Moldova and Ukraine alone, it is estimated that thousands of children live on the street to escape the problems at home

where violence, alcohol, and drugs prevail. Because they share needles or sell their bodies for sex, these children run a high risk of being infected with HIV. Worldwide the number of HIV infections is decreasing and fewer and fewer people are dying of AIDS. But here, in Europe, closer than you think, the number of HIV infections is on the rise. So that was one of our first programs when we started Hope for Ukraine, because Ukraine was number two country in Europe after Russia for HIV AIDS epidemic before the war, right? And there was a lot of kids who were born to HIV positive parents with the virus in their young bodies, right? And the government was giving them

some sort of medical treatments to help for the disease not to progress, but it was not enough. So then we would step in and we would work with these families to provide some supplemental medical treatment and resources to these kids to make sure that disease does not progress. not progress. Healthcare in Ukraine, you have to pay money for it. Even though they say, you know, it's a socialized medicine, but in order to get the proper medical treatment, you need to pay money. And a lot of these kids, they come from very poor families. Some of them lived in foster homes, right? That's how we started it to help these kids to make sure that they get proper medical attention, to make sure that the virus does not progress in their bodies. How do you talk to people, your peers and friends who are in the world of making money, and when you tell them, listen, I think I'm happier helping people, does it fall on deaf

ears or do people understand what you're doing? Once they try it and they see the results of the good deeds, they get hooked on it. And that's one of my foundations of what we do is to have very clear communication with every donor. So I wanna make sure everyone who follow us, they know exactly what we're doing. That's why we are updating our social media every two hours with the reports of what's going on the ground. So once you partner with us, you will know exactly. And once the people see the power of their $1 or the power of their $10,000, it changes them. Because it's something about activism and something about volunteering is that I believe it's good for your heart, for your health, physical health. And it just

gives people a different look on life once they get involved. It doesn't matter what kind of cause you are involved, but get involved in something. Just don't do like nine to five, making money and just going on a vacation. Get yourself involved in something that's not a material thing, and then you would definitely be satisfied. Let me talk about the flexibility of hope for Ukraine. You said that food support is the key to the work that your organization does. How do you meet the needs when they're constantly shifting and impacted by where Russia is operating? Hello everyone, I just would like to take this time to say thank you to all our donors. Because of your generosity, we started purchasing food for Ukraine for 2023. In this container there is almost 20 tons of food that's going to Ukraine to feed thousands of families.

We got instant noodles here, we got canned meat, we got soup, we got rice, we got cereal. Thank you so much for your generosity. This year we plan to feed over a million families in Ukraine. Last year we provided groceries to over half a million and this year we plan to double this. So thank you so much for standing with Ukraine. Thank you for your support of Hope for Ukraine and we wish you happy 2023. Thank you. We have the areas where we always serve, right?

We have the communities that we know that these people cannot survive unless they get food supplies, hygiene products from us. So we have the permanent towns where we send out humanitarian vans once a week, once in two weeks, depends on. And just to give you an idea, our food kit can sustain a family of four up to 10 days as far as the supplies. So what they're getting will last them for at least 10 days, seven days at least. And then for example, when the big attacks, remember when there was a big attack on the hospital in Kiev, on a children's hospital during the summer. So when you have instances like that, then we activate our resources in that particular region extra, go overdrive, and then we're trying to

respond there. But basically our main area of operation is frontline towns. I'm talking about Sumer region all the way across, and then also we do a lot of work with internally displaced. In Ukraine, there's about, I think last time I checked, we have about three million internally displaced people. So these are the people, because we have a center that we run in Lviv, Ukraine, that right now, I think we have 58 people who live there. Some of the folks that live there, been there for two years, because we cannot find them permanent place to stay. So there's millions of these people, they still live in school gyms, in community centers, and all they have to their name is the mattress or bed

and the suitcase, right? We do also events in towns where we operate from like Lviv, where we do events for internally displaced people, where we give them food, everything else they need. And we also involved a lot in children's programs for these internally displaced families because most of them, they are single mothers and they have kids that they're raising.

They have no money, no means to provide any type of activity for these kids outside of school. And just so we understand, most of the kids in Ukraine, very small percentage are doing person studying, a lot of it is virtual. And virtual right now because of the energy crisis. So just to understand, right now in Ukraine, as we speak, blackouts all across Ukraine, it's about 10 to 15 hours daily. No matter where you are, I'm not even talking about crazy areas in the front line, talking about big cities like Kiev, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odessa, you have hours upon hours that people have no electricity. So you can

understand the damage it has done to children in their educational process, in their everyday life, where they cannot do nothing. Because if you live in an apartment building, and that's the reason why you're trying to bring as many of these solar generators as possible, because they can be used on the ninth floor. The model can put this solar panel on the balcony, they can plug in. There's so many different needs there that it's like sometimes I get overwhelmed

because I don't know what to respond to. We're trying to do what we can with resources we got. The needs seem overwhelming. And with Hope for Ukraine, do you work with other organizations? For example, I used to sit on the board of the Joint Distribution Committee, which works in Ukraine. There are so many different organizations that are there. Do you coordinate so that, for example, when you're delivering meals, that the needs are met for

the town that you're going into, so that there aren't people that are left hungry there? Yeah, so we work with many different organizations. For example, for about two years, we partnered with World Central Kitchen. They actually provided meals to all the people who stayed in our refugee center. So it was a great partnership. They would cook meals and then they would deliver to our center and then we would feed these people twice a day with the meals that they would cook. But as far as on the ground, we have, like I said, over a hundred different organizations that are community-based organizations. And that's what I like because they know the area very well. You know, we get a lot of

requests from people in the West. Yeah, I want to go volunteer. I want to go deliver aid to frontlines, but it's very dangerous. Unless you are local, unless you know what are you doing, and unless you know these basements where people live, you cannot be really effective. So in every town, we have the people who actually live there, these organizations that are part of the community. So when we're targeting that and we give them, let's say, 500 footkits, I know that these guys will go and scavenge in the basements and they will find these families that live in the basements. And I know that these 500 kids will hit households that need it the most.

And that's why we've been so effective in having very small percentage, we don't have a lot of waste. So basically everything that comes in, just to give an idea, right now, every container we send to Ukraine with humanitarian aid, Ukrainian law, we have 90 days to distribute that aid. So there's no such thing as things sitting on a warehouse going nowhere. So as soon as it comes to Ukraine, we already line up the volunteers and we know we have to clear those 20 tons and give, and everyone who receives, they have to sign off on what they got because in the end of each month, we have to report to Ukrainian authorities that everything has to be distributed. I think that when you talk about knowing the region or knowing the village that you're

going into, I had the opportunity to visit Ukraine twice a long time ago. But I remember visiting an older woman outside of Zhitomir, and she was living in a house with a dirt floor, with no indoor plumbing, with an outhouse, no source of heat other than the organization I was involved with was bringing her a gas cylinder to heat her hot water. I think unless you're from a particular place and you know the place and you know the people and you know how they live, I think that you're not going to be as effective. I understand what you're saying, that you're working with people that they know exactly where people are living and exactly what they're going through.

And that's the key, just to give you one example, that story is like sticking my head all the time. Last week I get this video from one of our partners there. So they basically take the food kit and they take two loaf of bread and they go to this village and from the video I see that they cannot even drive the car because it's up the hill and it's snow. So they walk in with this food and two loaves of bread. So this 85-year-old lady meets them at the front of the gate. She takes them inside of her home. She takes them into this kitchen, and the house looks exactly like what you described before, right?

And when they put these two loaves of bread and the food kit on her table, when she looks at these two loaves of bread, she just starts crying uncontrollably because she probably hasn't received any aid for a long time. And for her to understand that no matter where she lives, how far it is from like a real world, somebody went there and found her, this is what's making a difference. And this what's energizing these volunteers because I get asked this question Why these guys keep doing this is because like events like this I spoke to this team

They like listen we want to find more of these Ladies like this because when we did something small like that is priceless You've obviously experienced it But I also have seen the volunteers on the ground in these very difficult areas really know that they're changing lives and they see it every day. But I want to get back to a point that you made previously about overhead and how when you built Hope for Ukraine, you wanted people to know that when they donate to the organization

that the money was going to go to help people and not to go for too much overhead. And where did you get that? Because that's something that I've also experienced, and sometimes you get pushback from organizations. So talk a little bit about that, about what you were trying to accomplish and why you thought that was important. Everything that nonprofits you thought that was important? Everything that nonprofits get as far as monetary donations from public, it's intended for recipients. It's not intended for... You do have to run the organization, but the percentage has to be under 10% the admin cost. And what I'm talking about is you can have a food kit. And I've seen this firsthand. There's two ways you can distribute the food kit, right?

You can have the food kit, put it in your hand and say, hey, go deliver the food kit. Boom, it's done. This is most effective way. But there's other way you can get the food kit. You can bring in all the volunteers and you can put them through three, three day training. How do you deliver a foot kit? How do you do this? You spend all that money on this training.

Sometimes there are certain areas we don't have time to have our printed bags with our logos. On the other hand, you can have the red tape around your operation, say, hey, you cannot deliver anything unless everybody have your logos, have your vests, have your tents set up. So these types of things, which is good, but it's up the cost of that food kit. Because in order to, you know, get the badges for everybody set up the tent, you've got to spend money on that. So I feel like, especially in the crisis areas, when it comes to like rebuilding and stuff, yeah, I believe you need to have the conferences, meetings and stuff like that to plan for big projects. But when you're talking about emergency relief, it has to be quick.

It has to be very efficient where everything that people give to you, you put it right back into the hands of those who need it. And I think working with the organization that are part of that community, and because they see the pain that the members of the community go through, that's why they want a response as efficient, as quick as possible. Sometimes you get the report of 120 pictures. I was like, guys, if you don't have to send me 120 pictures, I believe you, right? Just send me a few. But that's the kind of attitude

because these people are living through that pain and they want to make sure that we know that they did the right thing to report it back. So that's why keeping the cause down to report it back. So that's why keeping the cause down is very important for the sake of the donors and for the sake of the mission because unless you are good stewards of the money people entrusted you with, you cannot really grow and you cannot really call yourself a real nonprofit if 50% of that go to admin cost. Let me ask you another question about the context of the war. In 2022, there was worldwide focus on Ukraine, and a lot of people were giving money and

trying to really focus on helping the Ukrainian people. But the war has gone through ebbs and flows. How do you sustain the momentum when Ukraine is not the first thing in the news and not the first thing that people are paying attention to? We have to work seven times harder now than what we did in 2022 as far as sustaining the same level of support for people in Ukraine. Just to give you an idea, when the war started, full-scale war in 2022, we could have collected one container, 20 tons of humanitarian aid

within a week. So back then, we would send about four containers each month out of New Jersey here to Ukraine. And it was all coming from the local area, right? People donating here and stuff like that. Now we send in about one container a month of aid, but we have to collect stuff all over the United States. So basically, for example, last week we had a family up in Connecticut, right? They say, hey, we have a bunch of clothes here that we want to donate to people in Ukraine. So we had to send someone there to pick it up to bring it here. Then we had one business person in Washington state say, Hey, I want to donate some food. So we actually had to get a truck to bring it here. So right now for us to keep supply going and aid going is we have to find aid anywhere around

United States. There's still a lot of people who are passionate, who want to help Ukraine is just for us as an organization. We need to spend more time and resources to find these folks and put all together in order to keep aid going and keep conversation about Ukraine alive because I feel like right now, as far as the situation on the ground for civilians, they're in much worse shape than it was 2022. Let's talk about that a little bit because in 2020 it seemed like everyone was flying the Ukrainian flag, supporting the Ukrainian people, and now Ukraine has become a little bit of a divisive issue. What happened?

Politics got involved. I think politicians took Ukraine and they start using it for their own benefits, right? So whatever party is becoming more... I mean, 2022 was humanitarian issue. Everybody was supporting this, no matter what party you're on or what you support. Now, a lot of people, they took it and they're trying to use for their political gains, but it's not good. I think people not studying the history, and that's why they're making this mistake. Because what's happening right now is exactly what happened in previous century during World War II.

It's exactly the same, right? We have a crazy man who thinks he has some crazy ideas and he's not gonna stop until somebody stop him with a force. When you talk about Ukrainian people, there's two distinct populations. There are those who are living in Ukraine and those that are living abroad. How do you look at those two populations and how do you, how would you suggest that each of them be served?

My heart goes out to people who are in Ukraine. I do understand people who left and I wish them all the best, but I think the countries that they left to, whether it's United States or Europe, I think they have enough social programs to sustain them. My heart goes out to people who are still in the country and we still have almost 30 million people who are still there. And in my mind, almost 30 million people who still there. And in my mind, these are the bravest people in the planet, Arsh. Because everybody could leave the country in 2022. If you could, you need to have a passport. You just show up at the border saying, my name is Joe Black or whatever, and they let you into Europe, right? But these people who stayed back are the people who actually hold in Ukraine

together still, right? Those guys who went in and start fighting and didn't chicken out and didn't run out. That's why I have so much respect to them. We have one of these, he's a dentist. He does a lot of charitable dental work for our internally displaced people, but the guy donates 50% of his monthly salary, which is not big, to Ukrainian army. Like just to understand, every day, every week, thousands of weapons and FPV drones are bought through donations of Ukrainians who live inside of the country to the local organizations because they rather eat less, they rather have less clothes, but they don't want to leave Ukraine.

They want to stay in their homeland. They want to stay in a country and rebuild this country. And that's why these are my heroes these guys those 30 million people Because to live through the hell that they live in Every day you gotta understand if you have air rates every day you go to bed three o'clock You gotta get up. You gotta go hide You stay in the basement till five o'clock, and then you have to wake up and you have to go to work at 9 a.m.

And that's daily. Imagine yourself if you could not have a proper rest each and every night for almost three years, and they're still standing. So that's why I have so much respect for them. Where do you want to see hope Ukraine in the next five to 10 years? I want to see a hope for Ukraine to really become an agent of change and innovation as far as nonprofits go in Ukraine. I want us to grow. I'm not even

talking about financial as far as the processes. I wanna make sure that we utilize all of the tech achievements that we have as a humanity to bring aid faster and quicker to people, to use less human resources, but use all the tech tools that we have and help rebuild Ukraine. Because I do believe in the end of the day, Ukraine's gonna be one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. I do believe as far as the democracy-wise, I hope that Ukraine's gonna be next United States, as long as United States stays a democratic country, right?

And as far as development goes, economically-wise, I would like to see Ukraine to be like Singapore, where the infrastructure and everything is we have no more nuclear power plants, that we have solar plants, that we diversify everything, and all the people who have been suffering all this time, how long this war is gonna take, that they would be rewarded by living in much better society and their kids live in prosperous country. I wanna play as an organization, big part in that, helping rebuild Ukraine.

Thank you, Yuri, for being my guest on All About Change. And I'd like to end with saying, Slava, Ukraine. Heroin Slava Ukrainy! Heroim Slava! Today's episode was produced by Tani Levitt and Mijan Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word. Tell a friend or family member or leave us a review on your favorite podcastingcom. If you like our show, spread the word. Tell a friend or family member or

leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation. That's it for now. I'm Jay Ruderman and we'll see you next time on All About Change. Au revoir, but not goodbye. Au revoir, but not goodbye.