Almost half a million hryvnias provided for the educational business tour to Israel, the MSc in Technology Management master’s program participants decided to transfer to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Anatoliy Pazhyn, CEO of AnyforSoft and a graduate of the 8th group of the MSc in Technology Management program, told us that their group started training in 2019. “We had a study tour to Israel planned for the spring of 2020. Everyone had already had their tickets for April but then Covid-19 happened. Accordingly, everything was canceled. In 2021, Israel was not yet ready to receive guests. We were sure that we would go in 2022, but… the war came,” says Anatoliy.
One day, while chatting with fellow students in chat rooms, another graduate, Yulian Ustiyanovych, voiced the idea of transferring the funds that were planned for the business tour to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Almost the entire group supported this initiative. “At first we thought of sending the money to one of the large charitable funds, however, in the end, we decided to direct it to a specific local initiative – IT4Life fund from the Kharkiv IT Cluster, which has now focused its work on helping the Army,” added Anatoliy. In his opinion, it is precisely the small inner initiatives that receive the most support from people, because donors can see who exactly they are helping, which brigade or person, and how this can improve the situation on the front right away and bring us closer to victory.
The UCU Business School, for its part, joined the initiative and even increased the amount that was meant for the study tour. In total, 490,000 hryvnias were sent to the IT4Life charity fund. “We decided to use these funds to purchase a car for our soldiers. In addition, the remainder will be used to purchase communication equipment,” said Anatoliy. With the help of teammates, they also bought 4 Starlinks in Italy and joined the fundraising for purchasing Motorola walkie-talkies for soldiers.
Anatoliy himself is from Kharkiv, he actively organizes and supports various charity meetings; you can find info about them on his pages in social networks and join them. During the period of volunteering, he says, 5 cars have already been sent to the front and this will be the 6th. He emphasizes that it became possible thanks to the support of the Ukrainians.
“We once talked with Yaryna Boichuk, CEO of the UCU Business School, about the need to support internal initiatives. Currently, this is help for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, volunteering, but in general, it is very important to support inner initiatives in social groups, says Anatoliy Pazhyn. – Now we all have a single goal – to support Ukraine. Therefore, any other issues are put on the back burner. If we can significantly influence and help, then we need to do it!”
