Thank you — you funded a full year of therapy for our team
on Google
Dear supporters,
You've done it again! Thanks to you, we raised $69,070 for our mental health support program – surpassing our goal of $68,000.
Thanks to you, our team will have access to personal therapy for the entire year ahead: through the sleepless nights and the daily grind of running a newsroom in wartime. That helping hand means more than we can easily put into words.
Here's what happens next. As the funds arrive in our accounts, we'll spread them evenly across the coming months, covering therapy for the team through August next year. We will keep you updated on our progress.
This support will be much needed in the months to come.
We launched this fundraiser only five days ago — as it happened, the day after another mass missile attack hit Kyiv and the towns around it. With Russia showing no sign of stopping and Ukraine short of interceptor missiles, there will be more attacks to report on — and our team will be there.
Ukraine is bracing for another hard winter, possibly the hardest yet. We are preparing with what we can buy — heaters and generators for the office. But no amount of hardware fully prepares you for typing with hands stiff from the cold or sleeping in your outdoor clothes to stay warm.
"Money can buy hardware, but it cannot buy perseverance. Or so I thought. This campaign, and the response to it, might prove me wrong. Now, every time one of us sits down with a therapist, we'll know it is thanks to someone in our community. That gives us hope — and maybe, in its own way, it buys us a little more resilience after all," says Daryna Shevchenko, the CEO of the Kyiv Independent.
Once again this year, the Kyiv Independent turned to its community for support — and once again, you reached back. It is proof, one more time, that journalism does not need a rich owner; it needs readers journalists can rely on — even as the days grow darker.
For that, we thank you.
