With the recent purchases of CJ*F prints, as well as kind donations from family, friends and even folks whom I have never met before, CrackerJackFlash is pleased to share that we raised $1,159.50 last week to help support a family escape war-torn Ukraine and shelter them in Bulgaria for the next few months.
Heartfelt thanks to those who have contributed to this and the countless other humanitarian efforts seen around the world. As expressed in a letter of gratitude below, donations such as these have gone beyond providing basic needs and temporary shelter. They have also boosted morale enabling a family such as this one to know they aren’t alone, that they are loved and deeply cared for:
“We don’t know most of you personally, but my wife and I are really grateful for your support in our life!
The support we’ve got from you was very touching and really necessary for us at this point of life! Thanks to it, we’re able to go through challenges in our new life in the new country.
It was really challenging for us to leave our home and everything behind with just backpacks and two suitcases, but the worst is uncertainty that we may never be able to return, at least right now.
Even after leaving Ukraine, we couldn’t believe that we’re abroad and managed to get in here. This is mostly because our relatives and friends are still there and either can’t or don’t want to leave the country and still under the threat. Even being in here, we’re still immersed in everything what’s happening to our homeland.
There are good news though. In the meantime, we finally managed to convince my parents who lived in Mykolaiv to leave it, at least for some time. It was a major relief for us to know they are in the same place, we’re in the different countries right now but hoping to see each other soon. They are finally in the safe place, and that’s the most important.
With the help of all the kind people we’ve met and our friends who’re hosting us and eight more people in their house, we were able to slowly come back to norm.
As it turned out, living in a big commune is difficult at the time, but a fun experience as well as there are always good and like-minded people around you who can provide support in the hard minute, and it makes chores less taxing too. 🙂
We all take the own stake part in our home’s life, everyone’s doing something they love and do the best, like cooking, cleaning, shopping. Myself, I’m trying to bake whole grain sourdough breads every day and my wife is cooking. And on weekends she did a few yoga classes for people who live with us and taught painting kids and their moms.
Svetlana found a new remote job, she’s a graphic designer and although it’s not related to her main specialization it should work for now and boost our family’s income. She’s working on an English-speaking company, which is pretty challenging for her as she didn’t have much practice with the language before, but I’m sure she’ll master it soon 🙂
Thanks to the monetary support, she was able to focus on learning her new duties instead of thinking all the time about money after losing her previous offline job.
Also, we’ve researched possibilities of how we can settle down for good. We weren’t planning to move, so came in here totally disoriented.
Originally we wanted to stay in the Czech Republic, as we have a lot of friends in here, we can somewhat understand Czech language, and it should be relatively easy to learn. They are close to our families, and their culture share a lot with ours.
But there are a lot of refugees in here from our country, so finding a place for rent is hard these days. But what’s more important, after our protection status is over we will not be able to stay in here unless we find some local job, and we’re both working remotely so that will not work for us.
At the current moment, we’ve checked many countries where we can work remotely and get a permanent residence permission in case we will not be able to return home. Right now Portugal is our favourite candidate, but we’re still learning about it, and consider other possibilities too, as we’ve never travelled that far from home and never been to Portugal before.
Once again, I’d like to thank to everyone for your help. And especially to my friend, and boss Ross who organized this campaign and supports our family, and to my friend Andy and Odd Fellows who raised money for us and for many other Ukrainians.
And thanks for everyone who provided the words of support for us in those hard moments! We’ve never expected to find out that there are so many kind people surround us in this big world who willing to help to others in need.
My apologies for not writing earlier but as I’ve written above, even after leaving we went through some hard times with our relatives and only recently managed to get back to life a bit. I’ll try to find time to do more regular updates as we’ve got some news.
Дякуємо вам від щирого серця за вашу підтримку!…Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support “