Please visit our Facebook page for updates on our recent progress on our projects.
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Doubles Tennis Tournament Registration to Benefit Ukraine
To register, please visit our Tennis Tournament for Ukraine form.
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Other Ukrainian relief projects
Ukrainian War Relief
Since the beginning of the war, we have been working to raise money for the individual needs of refugees, soldiers, orphans, and internally displaced persons. So far we have been able to provide lifesaving assistance such as professional rescues for three elderly residents of Kharkiv, solar power banks for frontline soldiers, boots and helmets for nurses in a frontline field hospital, transportation and temporary shelter costs for refugees, critical medicines and their delivery to cut-off neighborhoods, transportation costs for humanitarian aid shipments, clothing and supplies for an orphan’s camp, and much more.
The fundraising goal for this particular effort is uncapped as needs continue to grow daily with Ukrainians spending the last of their savings, more and more housing being destroyed, and more and more families being left to cope with severe injuries and deaths in the family.
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IDP Housing Project
In collaboration with Sean Penn’s nonprofit Core Response, we are working with the town of Kopychyntsi in the Ternopil region to renovate an existing structure into suitable housing for internally displaced refugees within Ukraine. This very small town has grown by approximately 20% or 1,200 people since the beginning of the war. Kostyantyn’s property development experience has situated him in the center of the project, providing information and cost estimates to the town’s mayor and to CORE, who recently committed $75,000 to the project. The total estimated cost for the project, however, is $250,000, and we hope to help the village realize their project by raising additional funds.
Other projects
Translations
Kostyantyn obtained permission to translate Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s book In Love With the World into Ukrainian in partnership with the publisher BookChef (download this completed translation here). Kostyantyn served as the content editor, and the digital translation is being distributed free of charge. We are very grateful for your generosity on this project, and our fundraising goal of $1000 to pay for the professional translation has been met. We are very excited about this project as Rinpoche’s near-death experience will resonate deeply with the wartime experience of many Ukrainians.
Past translation projects include Bhikkhu Bodhi’s ten-lecture series “Buddha’s Teaching As It Is” (download this completed translation here; download the original English audio here). Along with the help of other transcription volunteers, Cori and Kostyantyn transcribed each of the English lectures, and then Kostyantyn translated all ten lectures into Russian. They have yet to be published as they are still under Bhikku Bodhi’s review.
Pensacola Area
The homeless population in the greater Pensacola area continues to grow enormously. Both Akeem and Cori have spent countless hours volunteering at the St Vincent De Paul Society’s Alfred Washburn Center for the homeless and hungry, working directly with hundreds of clients in our community. Frequently serving in the center’s laundry and shower area, they have seen up close how desperate the situation is, especially with our area’s intense heat, frequent dangerous storms, and lack of shelters. As specific needs are brought to our attention, we plan to support individuals in ways appropriate to their personal situations. This might mean providing appropriate work shoes, paying for a haircut, or assisting with hotel accommodations after surgery, for example.
As a teacher and a mother, Corinne also encounters children in the area who are in need of assistance. Funds donated under the Pensacola area tab may be used to assist these children with anything from tutoring services to clothing and shelter. One older teenager, for example, was living in a broken down car in Gulf Breeze after being sexually abused by a family member and abandoned. We have been able to provide her shelter and support so that she can live peacefully, continue to work, and start planning for her future again.
If you know of a specific local situation where we might be able to help, please contact us, and we will do our best to help.
Other projects
Please visit our Donate page and click Other projects, if you would like to specify how your money will be allocated or, conversely, if you would like it to go to a general fund so we can use where we see the most urgent need.