I. DONATE
1) BUY MERCH: Your “Empathy = Strength” T-shirt or Coffee Mug purchase will literally save lives.
Empathy = Strength, Let Freedom Ring shirts and merch save lives. Order your Official Raw Travel “Empathy = Strength” Shirts and Mugs HERE
Order the Empathy = Strength T-shirt that Rob wears on the show, or the coffee mugs, and $10 of every order will support Care4Ukraine.org and their sister organization of “Keep The Kids Learning.”
Or check our new Coffee Mugs as well. Same deal. All profits (approximately $10) will go to help our pals at Care4Ukraine.org and Keep the Kids Learning.
Order your shirt and Mugs HERE
2) DONATE TO CARE4UKRAINE.ORG: If you prefer to donate directly, you may do so at our GoFundMe page at the link below: https://gofund.me/ad765274 to support Care4Ukraine.org
Providing Medical, Dental, Hygiene, Transportation and Educational Aid throughout Ukraine
Care4Ukraine is a grassroots organization, operating in Ukraine with local and expat volunteers. The focus of their work is supporting Internally Displaced People (IDP’s), people that have been forced from their homes and cities but do not have refugee status. Through programs like KEEP THE KID’S LEARNING their teams offer daily social support, in addition to basic medical and dental care, teacher support, and safe places to stay warm. In the past year they have delivered solar generators, water filtration kits, power banks, medicines, wound care supplies, medical equipment, and more.
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3) DONATE TO ANASTASIA’S FATHER’S TROOP
Raw Travel has deep connections in Ukraine. Anastasia, our Ukrainian videographer, and her family are two times refugees, having already fled Donbas for Kyiv.
Anastasia’s father is a soldier fighting near the front. Her mother is a doctor.
Raw Travel was able to help Anastasia help her father’s platoon obtain a truck to continue Ukraine’s victory against Russian Occupiers & Terrorists. We’ve also been able to secure a drone, body armor and other supplies for her father’s troop.
They are currently in need of Petrol Power Generators, Chainsaws, Chemical Warmer Pads and Starlinks.
If you’d like to help Anastasia’s father’s troop, please donate directly at our GoFundme Page and comment: For Anastasia
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II. ADVOCATE
- TAKE ACTION POLITICALLY: Please tell our politicians to continue to support Ukraine. You can visit this link for an easy way to do this. It takes less than two-minutes and is very effective (and needed). https://www.votervoice.net/RAZOMFORUKRAINE/Campaigns/107413/Respond
WHO IS YOUR REPRESENTATIVE? You can type in your address and and find out HERE
- GET HOLODOMOR CLASSIFIED AS GENOCIDE:
When I first heard about the Holodomor, the purposeful starvation of millions of Ukrainians by the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, I was shocked. How is it that I hadn’t heard of this massive mass government-sponsored killing before? The death toll was more than even the Holocaust, and the suffering was similar.
I read more details in the book “Blood Lands” by the great historian Timothy Snyder. I now see that the Holodomor fits with the definition of genocide, “the intentional destruction of an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part” (the term “genocide” did not exist until after the Holocaust years later).
2023 marks the 90th anniversary, and November is Holodomor Remembrance Month.
You can learn more about the Holodomor and sign the petition to have it demarcated as genocide at the link below. It’s an EASY and FREE way to show support for Ukraine.
Sign the petition HERE
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III. EDUCATE
Learning the history and geopolitics of another country is not easy. It is complicated by the onslaught of Russian propaganda and social media bots. Still, I’ve been visiting Ukraine since 2012 and have witnessed many changes in this young country in this decade plus.
Since then, I have watched numerous documentaries, read hundreds of articles and books, attended dozens of panels, and perhaps most importantly, have spoken to hundreds of people and, in my travels during the war, have witnessed first-hand the war crimes perpetrated by Russian aggression.
The 2022 full invasion was not the beginning but merely another stage in Russia’s long-planned takeover and continued attempt at stamping out (genocide) Ukrainian culture, language, and people.
Below are links to just a few recommended resources that will get your on your way to learning more about the history and geopolitics of the region.
- 20 Days in Mariupol – An AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city, they capture what later become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more. After nearly a decade covering international conflicts, including the Russia-Ukraine war, for The Associated Press, 20 Days in Mariupol is Mstyslav Chernov’s first feature film. The film draws on Chernov’s daily news dispatches and personal footage of his own country at war. It offers a vivid, harrowing account of civilians caught in the siege, as well as a window into what it’s like to report from a conflict zone, and the impact of such journalism around the globe.
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- PAUL GROD ARTICLE – Short on time? Well, this article is for you. Paul Grod”s six-minute article succinctly and accurately demonstrates that Russia does not believe Ukraine and, thus, Ukrainians even have a “right to exist,” hitting all the five factors consistent with the definition of genocide. It’s a must-read to get a quick background on Russia’s 300-plus-year history of trying to exterminate Ukraine.
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- A Rising Fury reveals the untold story of how the Russo-Ukrainian war began in 2014. This is a unique film that explains how we arrived at this point in history through events and personal accounts on the ground. The film team followed several people for nearly 10 years from the Revolution of Dignity in 2013 to the battlefields in Eastern Ukraine, and during the full-scale invasion in 2022.
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- THE LONG BREAKUP – The Long Breakup is a feature length documentary about Ukraine’s struggle to escape Russia’s embrace, leave its Soviet past behind and become a truly independent nation. Ukrainian-American journalist Katya Soldak, of Forbes Magazine, now living in New York City, tells the story of her home country as it exits the USSR, works through two revolutions, and endures a war with Russia—all through the eyes of her family and friends in Kharkiv, a large Ukrainian city just 18 miles from the Russian border.
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- Rick Ray Films – Rick is a tireless, fellow traveling filmmaker and stock video producer who traveled to Ukraine for several weeks after the full invasion in 2022. Rick is back in the US, making presentations to schools, universities, and civic groups around the country about his travels to Ukraine If you are interested in booking Rick for his live presenations, please visit his website and you can preview some of his short films from Ukraine HERE.
Currently in development, the film Be Safe: Stories from Ukraine features in-depth interviews with a range of Ukrainian citizens, including neighbors, children, soldiers, and priests. Told in their own words, they relay the shock of going from regular daily life to living amidst a brutal and relentless Russian campaign designed to terrorize and destroy their way of life.
Outraged by the images coming out of Ukraine, California-based filmmaker Rick Ray (10 Questions for the Dalai Lama, Lynching Charlie Lynch) traveled to Ukraine to help document first-hand accounts as told by Ukrainian citizens. These individual narratives now form a mosaic of the struggles of ordinary people in Ukraine as they stand against Russian aggression. The hope is that in sharing these stories with a wide audience, the film will help broaden awareness of the war and maintain support for the people of Ukraine.
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- SHORT HISTORY OF UKRAINE: Click the link to download this PDF for an uber-useful shorthand to Ukrainian and Russian relations over the years.
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- BUCHA (In production) – In April of 2022, the public learned about horrific events that took place in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities occupied by the Russian troops. Bucha’s mission is to tell the entire world about what really happened. This film is based on the true story of a refugee from Kazakhstan who saved hundreds of Ukrainians in Bucha and in other occupied cities and towns.
You can learn more about the film’s objective to counter Russian propaganda through a movie based on actual events. You can also help them fund the movie by donating.
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- TIMOTHY SNYDER – BLOODLANDS – Any book by the well-respected historian and author Timothy Snyder is recommended, but I especially found Bloodlands helpful. ABOUT TIMOTHY SNYDER Timothy Snyder is Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. He has held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard.
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- HOLODOMOR – The Holodomor is covered extensively in Timothy Snyder’s book, “Bloodlands,” yet many Americans aren’t even aware of this horrific man-made famine perpetrated by the Soviet Union against the people of Ukraine in the 1930s. Joseph Stalin’s government purposely starved millions of Ukrainians and murdered, relocated, and imprisoned millions more. Learn more about the Holodomor at the links below. Please Note: “The Ukraine” is pejorative. It’s the way that Russia referred to Soviet Ukraine as a way of referring to the region as an object rather than a place.
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- DON’T SAY “THE UKRAINE” – It’s just Ukraine. Generally speaking, many Ukrainians don’t like “The Ukraine” because it translates to “the borderland” and symbolizes it as a region in Russia. Read more about it at the following links:
https://theconversation.com/its-ukraine-not-the-ukraine-heres-why-178748
https://www.sapiens.org/language/ukraine-versus-the-ukraine/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/defending-ukraine/622063/
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- COMPANIES DOING BUSINESS IN RUSSIA
Believe it or not, major companies like Hugo Boss still do business in Russia. Here is a good resource if you’d like to boycott companies doing business in Russia or name and shame them (see our Hall of Shame) for more.
