Ukraine Conflict - Worldwide Friends' Efforts

"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all his creatures. His tender mercies are over all his works; and so far as his love influences our minds, so far we become interested in his workmanship and feel a desire to take hold of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the afflicted and increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have a prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable that to turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives."

—John Woolman: “A plea for the poor,” (written in 1763-4) in The journal and major essays, ed. Phillips P. Moulton, 1971, p. 241.

Recent:

Some Recommended Ukrainian History Information

The daily worship offered by Friends House Moscow has compiled a short list from suggestions by their attendees.

A lecture on the history of Ukraine can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv4sMHarOvQ [1]

Reading List

• The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhill Plokhy
• The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, Second edition by Andrew Wilson
• Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands by Richard Sakwa
• Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid
• Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine by Jane Dawkins

Online Worship Meetings

see Facebook links below to obtain Zoom links

Worldwide, Friends have been making Zoom meetings publically available. Generally the purposes are to support peaceful actions by the conflicting parties, hold all who are suffering in the Light, and uphold one another in our own emotional upheaval and personal application of the Peace testimony. All of the meetings I have attended have been unprogrammed in format, and had extended post-worship discussions.

• Daily International Meeting for Worship for Peace (Friends House Moscow, noon)
  • Multiple breakout rooms after the hour of unprogrammed worship, organized by topic
  • Well attended by those from US, UK, and many other geographies
• Kwakrzy Quakers Bialystock, Friday at 3pm
  • Very small meeting with international attendees, usually includes a Friend still living in Kharkiv
• Quakers of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday 1pm

International Donations - How To

From Kathi C: I have created a new personal bank account for the sole purpose of supporting donations to overseas accounts. It has been tested, and a transaction confirmed end-to-end from here to Poland. If anyone would like to make a donation to the overseas bank account of a charity, I am willing to facilitate this or advise how to set it all up. (It is fairly easy to find a calculator online to show APPROXIMATELY how your US dollars will be exchanged.)

Donation Opportunities

FWCC - EMES Donation Information

Friends World Committee for Consulatation (FWCC) - Europe and Middle East Section (EMES) have published this link to information about how to donate to Quaker work supporting Ukrainian refugees:

https://fwccemes.org/news/quaker-support-for-ukraine [2]

This includes examples of how money might be spent by Quakers in Estonia, Georgia, Hungary and Poland.

Ukrainian Refugee Children’s Fund - A Project under the Care of Białystok Quaker Meeting

(Gerard Guiton [3], a Quaker author of note in Australia, is sponsoring Bialystok in this.)

Using Facebook

Facebook is the best source to find meeting invitations and projects. Posts have the most recent information for worship meetings, discussions, donation opportunities, and safety updates of Friends still in the conflict zone. Sponsoring meetings and organizations invite the public to their online meetings by posting Zoom links with no need to pre-register or obtain a separate password. So far all of the meetings have either been in English or there was good ongoing interpretation.

Not a Facebook user? In some cases these groups also have web sites - use a browser search engine to search by the same name as listed below.

Here's a list of FB account names, with hyperlinks to them, in order of frequency of relevent posts:

1. Kwakrzy Quakers Bialystok Online [4]
   • Ukrainian Refugee Children's Fund [5]
2. Quakers of Kyiv, Ukraine [6]
3. FWCC - Europe and Middle East Section (EMES) - Quaker [7]
4. Friends House Moscow [8]
5. Friends World Committee for Consultation - FWCC World Online [9]
6. Quakers in Central Europe [10]
7. Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) [11]

Contact us!

If you have a comment about this page, or have a potential item to add, please email WebClerk [at] concordfriendsmeeting [dot] org