Helping to Leave’s humanitarian mission is to help Ukrainians affected by russia’s military invasion of Ukraine and the genocide of its people.

The project’s objective is to help people obtain essential humanitarian aid and evacuate to safety from active combat zones, Ukrainian territories under temporary russian occupation, and russian regions to which Ukrainian citizens have been forcibly deported.

The project began as a Telegram chat created by a few like-minded individuals on February 24th. Hundreds of people reached out from all over the world, offering help, together with Ukrainian people, on the other hand, looking for help with the evacuation. Over the first few weeks of its existence, the chat grew into an informational channel with 50,000 subscribers, alongside the project team establishing a volunteer network and technical infrastructure necessary for urgent evacuations from military combat zones.

Our team comprises over 400 volunteers from all over the world, working from Ukraine, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Israel, Georgia, Spain, Italy, USA, Canada, and other countries. The volunteers process over 1000 applications daily in the Telegram chatbot, an automated response system established for fast help-seeking. Furthermore, volunteering assistants consult and coordinate people regarding humanitarian, medical and legal matters. Helping to Leave includes special teams dedicated to the evacuation of people from combat zones and occupied territories, such as Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Crimea, and russian federation, where they were forcibly deported to.

On April 25th 2022, Helping to Leave became officially registered as a non-commercial organization based in the Czech Republic (registration number: 17065925). Current European law allows us to exist in the same transparent financial system as our donors from Europe and USA, and to receive international grants and support from the corporate sector.