Since the breakout of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Ataccamers have, spontaneously at first, started organizing to provide aid and relief to Ukraine and its inhabitants. Over the past few weeks, our colleagues have shown an incredible outpouring of compassion, initiative, and creativity in responding to the growing humanitarian crisis.
“I am happy and proud that in a truly agile, self-organized way, individuals and Ataccama as a company have been donating much-needed supplies to aid the people of Ukraine,” said Ataccama’s CEO, Michal Klaus. “The feelings of support and solidarity with Ukraine have been amazing and inspiring within Ataccama, and we will keep doing our best to help out as much as we can.”
Here, we’d like to proudly share some of their achievements.
Donation drives go without saying — we engaged Adra and Post Bellum to raise as much as we could to support the influx of refugees, and cooperated with Nadace Špuntíci to provide humanitarian aid. Since then, we’ve started several Slack channels, each with its designated leader, to organize and delegate the relief efforts:
- Accommodation — connecting refugees with colleagues to host them in their homes
- Volunteering — coordinating the volunteer efforts for aid sorting and other intake center tasks
- Border Trips — planning border trips, picking up and dropping off refugees
- Donation — organizing fundraisers and donation drives
- Humanitarian Aid — coordinating hygiene products, food, and other humanitarian aid efforts
- Baby Stuff — collecting prams, clothes and everything baby-related
We’ve already managed to house over 7 families, we’ve been driving people to and from the borders with Slovakia and Ukraine, and we’ve managed to extract and bring over a whole family from Lviv.
We’ve set up channels to help provide information about legal matters, job searches, childcare, and more. We are also trying to help directly: we have started a babysitting group where employees offer their time and homes to watch children while their mothers handle errands or look for jobs. We’re doing everything in our power to offer jobs, or assist with the search elsewhere. We’re fighting misinformation on Signal, Telegram and anywhere else we can be of help.
During all this, two of our employees, Adina Foxová and Jiří Sekera, worked with Česko.digital and Solidpixels to build a website that collects all the different ways people can help in one place. www.stojimezaukrajinou.cz was built and launched in days, and is still providing comprehensive information in Czech and English for anyone who wants to help, in any capacity. At its peak, the website had almost 40 000 visitors.
Since day one, Ataccama’s Prague offices have been transformed into a relief intake center — the video game room is now aid storage, and all employees bring their items straight to the office, where we sort and send them to their final destinations.
But it’s far from just the Prague office. Our wonderful colleagues around the world are leading relief efforts back home — Dmitry Fedarchuk in Toronto, Will Dalrymple in London, Tatiana Kubisova in Bratislava and Kristiyana Georgieva in Sofia have all been spearheading collections and fundraisers in their local offices, while exploring other ways to help.
Finally, we’ve started organizing info sessions at our office for refugees already in Prague. The first one covered how to apply for a visa, where to look for a job and how to get around Prague and local administration. The latest one covered school enrollment and extracurricular activities for kids.
We wish we had the space to name each and every person in Ataccama who selflessly gave their time and effort to help, but, as one of our most dedicated employees, Lukáš Hlaváček, recently said:
“I wanted to make a Hall of Fame to list everyone who helped, but after thinking about it, I realized it’s most of us. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The only thing that does is to keep helping. That’s why we’re still here, day in, day out, doing everything we can to make sure this situation wraps up as soon and with as little pain as possible. We push on.
Glory to Ukraine.