Sunflower Update: Early Days

Hey all! Lots of good news in the last few days.

  • We have an apartment now in Warsaw! Two bedroom and a couch in the living room, so as we grow we can stuff all of us in. Kevin Raison is in there now, and I’ll be going to Poland in a week or so, and it is nice to have a place to sleep. Was kinda sweating that.
  • Kevin delivered our first load of relief aid directly to Ukrainian border. (See photos) Hooked up with an animal charity over there. The supplies were subcutaneous chips for pets, going to a vet clinic in Lviv doing free work for refugees. These chips help in surprising ways. Of course, they help people who might lose their pets. But also, there are many refugees traveling with their dogs and cats, and pets are not allowed into the EU countries until they have been chipped. So people are trapped in Lviv, unless they want to leave their pets behind. These thousand chips will directly help a thousand animal refugees and the families that love them.
  • Our draft website is being built! So much goes into websites. Well, a lot of you are familiar. But we should have something up rather sooner than later.
  • We have an official mailing address now in Seattle for the organization. One more brick in building an official nonprofit. We should soon have official phone accounts so we can move on from our personal lines.
  • We have our first online fundraiser up and live! Please, you know.
  • We are making good contacts daily with great people, and networking with other great projects and organizations. Likely some cool announcements in that area coming soon.
  • We are continuing to source MRE’s for delivery to Ukraine.

The news from Ukraine is awful. It has been 48 hours now that up to a thousand people, (all civilans seeking shelter) have been trapped alive under the rubble of the theater in Mariupol that the Russians shelled. And rescuers can’t get to them because the Russians are still shelling the area. It’s maddening. The response should be global, on the scale of when those Thai boy scouts were trapped in a cave. Yet there is little news of it.

The only way to fight this kind of tragedy, and to fight the despair it brings, is, well, by fighting it.
Many hands pushing on the rock.

This is a Dunkirk moment in our lives.
The question of “How many boats should set out to provide relief?” has a simple answer.
All the boats.
Every damn boat.
Cruise liners to skiffs, if it floats get it moving.
We’re a little boat now, but we are already putting out to sea and moving.

Thank you all!