Help Rescue a Group of Over 500 Students from Sumy

Dear Supporters of Sumy Fund,

Since our last update 5 days ago (now available also on our website), Russia's invasion on Ukraine continues to tear the country apart. At this moment, the United Nations estimates that over 1.7 million people have left Ukraine and up to 4 million may end up displaced within the next few weeks.

Unfortunately, as you already know, not everyone is able to reach the border and international students stuck in Sumy are among this group. We initially set up this fundraiser with the hopes that we could provide food and clothing for a very short time, giving those trapped just enough buffer, so that they could prepare for an eventual evacuation and have the financial means necessary to travel across the country to reach Ukraine's Western neighbors.

Yesterday, we received saddening news that despite action from the Indian Embassy in Ukraine, over 600 students could not leave Sumy due to safety concerns, and that another attempt will be made today. Additionally, it is estimated that more than a thousand African and Caribbean students are stuck in Sumy, 300 of them from Nigeria alone. Multiple efforts have been launched to help those trapped in the city, including Black Women For Black Lives who have raised over £99,000 to help Sumy students and who with the help of those funds launched Operation Opalion in an effort to coordinate and organize an evacuation. We encourage you to follow and amplify the work of BW4BL as we believe in the importance of prioritizing Black voices and initiatives in this humanitarian crisis in which so many Black people are severely affected and yet somehow forgotten.

While we wait for the news on a possible evacuation later today, we also wanted to share with you a video from Samuel Otunla, a Veterinary Medicine masters student at Sumy National Agrarian University, who recorded a short video for us last Friday, which we received shortly before our initial email to you went out. Samuel has been also interviewed by Chiamaka Okafor for an article published in Premium Times in which he describes the traumatic experience of being unable to escape the city.

Since we hear more about preparedness for evacuation, we continue to raise funds knowing that the students who have so far benefitted from our help will require financial support when they finally embark on their journey to safety. Following the lead of our partners on the ground, if we raise the maximum of our goal - that is $20,000, we will save $5,000 for needs related specifically to what happens after the students are able to safely leave Sumy.

When it comes to our expenditures, we decided that this update should also introduce to you our process of supporting students. In the beginning, we thought that we would be able to provide food and clothing through various humanitarian and commercial channels but that task proved itself to be almost impossible and inefficient given our capacities, as we are an informal group whose members are based in different parts of the world, including Poland, Germany and the United States. We therefore opted for cash transfers - the most direct and straightforward form of mutual aid where individuals are able to be in control of how they use the help they are being offered, which helps them maintain agency and subjectivity.

With the help of three intermediaries - two based in the USA and one in the UK we are disbursing the money directly to bank accounts and debit cards as our intermediaries are able to send out funds in different currencies. One of them, Weronika Betta, has kindly offered that she can be reached out to via email by potential supporters who cannot use PayPal, prefer to avoid any fees associated with it or have a preference for currency other than USD. If you know of someone who prefers to liaise without the use of PayPal, please direct them to her.

We are still working with our intermediaries to receive a full spreadsheet of all the transfers they made to students in need but can so far share that within the first 72 hours we distributed $3,706 to students in need! (You can find a visual of those transactions at the end of this email). Up until today we raised $11,715.24, out of which $537.03 was taken out by PayPal to cover their fees. More than 250 of you donated to our cause in just a week, ensuring that many of the students did not go hungry and had their basic needs met in a time of extreme crisis. We are immensely grateful.

After paying the fees, we had $11,178.21 to disburse and most of these funds ($10,942.53) are already with intermediaries who are working with our contact on the ground who assess needs and directs who should receive a deposit. As we move into another week, I hope to have more updates for you all soon, including another breakdown of transfers. Our fundraiser ends in just two days but depending on how the situation in Sumy progresses, we may extend it by another week.

Thank you for your support thus far and for your trust in us. As always, please reach out if you have any questions and share the fundraiser with someone who may want to donate. We would not have raised so much in so little time if it wasn't for you and the networks you build and are a part of.

Take care

Sumy Fund is a fundraising initiative by Diana Safo, Julia, Magdo, Nathaniel and Wiktor Dynarski. Graphics by Weronika Betta. Please respond to this message with 'unsubscribe' if you wish to no longer receive any updates about this cause.

This update is also available as a post on instagram.