Donate to help raise $6,000 to meet their purchase deadline.
Anastasiia Vakulenko (Ana) a law student, karate champion and lieutenant in the army reserves now also coordinates a group of 21-23 year olds, who provide dry ration meals to soldiers and humanitarian aid to recently liberated villages. Newly incorporated as a nonprofit, Volunteers from the Cottage are additionally raising $9,000 to purchase and drive an ambulance from England to Ukraine by January 15, 2023. The ambulance will evacuate wounded from the frontlines in the Donetsk region. Napa Valley to Ukraine paid the $1,000 deposit to reserve the vehicle. We are now helping raise the $6000 needed to complete their purchase.
Meet the Volunteers from the Dacha (Cottage)
This recruitment / training video for new “Volunteers from the Cottage” features Ana and other members of their group talking about how to prepare dry rations for the soldiers at the front, a number of whom who Ana went to military college with. What started as a cottage industry- the dehydration of and packaging into meals in the dachas (cottages) of volunteer’s families on the outskirts of Kyiv – has ramped up to to the production of 2,000 meals a month from 2 tons of vegetables. Meet Ana and other dedicated volunteers talking about how and why they do what they do in this video. Ana explains that they help feed their friends who are soldiers because otherwise “we will have #$@!% (Russians) eating in our houses.” Follow Ana on Instagram: instagram.com/ana.vakulenko.