The Sunflower Project was formed by Kevin Raison and Rick Wilson in the days following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kevin was living in Kyiv, Ukraine at the time, and happened to be in Kharkiv on the first day of the war. He escaped under fire, gathered some belongings in Kyiv, and made his way out of the country as a refugee. While recovering the next few days in Romania, Kevin, in communication with Rick in Oklahoma, formed the idea to create a direct relief aid organization to help the Ukrainian people.

Rick had lived in Ukraine for some of 2019, and had been researching a book on the history of Ukraine. Both Rick and Kevin have long histories of activism and direct action. Rick worked for a decade as a homeless counselor, has led many environmental projects, and has successfully done foreign direct aid work previously. Kevin has also worked with the homeless, as a labor organizer and in support of autonomous housing in several different nations around the world.

The Sunflower Project was formed as a 501c3 Nonprofit Corporation in the United States, legally established on March 8^th, 2022*. We are operationally based in Warsaw, Poland and Mykolaiv, Ukraine, and have also been legally established as a charity foundation within Ukraine and Poland. We work from Mykolaiv when we are not delivering aid around Ukraine. We have multiple vehicles of our own, most notably an incredibly tough truck with a trailer and a large cargo van, which we use to transport aid into Ukraine. We both source aid items ourselves, and work with partners who have aid supplies and need drivers and transportation. We also  support de-mining activities and UXO education in the liberated territories of Ukraine.

We have the support of a several part-time, highly skilled volunteers in the States, and have had a few full-time volunteers show up to help us out in Europe, and we are immensely grateful to them all. We are working in partnership with several other organizations to deliver aid to Ukraine, among them DTCare, Darkhorse Benefits,  Greater Good Charities, Road 2 Relief, EastLancs4Ukraine, Volunteering and Help Center, Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), Ternopil National Medical University, Project CURE, and Medic Corps, as well as a number of  independent activists and operators who have provided crucial support.

Please contact us (info@bluestarsunflower.org) if you have aid supplies that need to be delivered, have leads on funding options or getting aid supplies, or are willing to volunteer and help out in any way. All of our success has arisen from the support of our community. We value that support, and are committed to honoring it with real world results. Many hands pushing on the rock.

Thank you,
The Sunflower Project

*We are a United States 501c3 Nonprofit, tax exempt organization operating as a Public Charity under the status 170(b)(1)(A)(iv), with the specific purpose of providing emergency and relief aid on an international basis.