After the successful call for the Rapid Response Grant Program for Social Enterprises by the USVF (Ukrainian Social Venture Fund), which was aimed at supporting social enterprises in wartime, 13 enterprises were selected for support.
The enterprises selected successfully developed their social enterprises in peacetime, and after the beginning of a full-scale invasion, they needed help with transformation, relocation or purchasing additional equipment to increase their production and solve urgent social problems.
Meet some of the grantees:
The social enterprise InvaFishki has its own online store of goods for people with disabilities, provides consulting services on the arrangement of public and private spaces and has a wheelchair maintenance workshop.
InvaFishki: “In our country, even in the best rehabilitation centres, people are promised the possibility of recovery for a considerable sum of money, when there are no objective grounds for this. Therefore, a person can wait for a miracle for 15 years, without furnishing their home and without changing their world. People should live, and not wait their whole life for an impossible recovery”.
The grant received from the Ukrainian Social Venture Fund, helped the team to relocate their enterprise to a safer region and ensure the smooth operation of the enterprise. Read the interview here with the company’s co-founder Vitalii Pcholkin about the main challenges of people with spinal cord injuries during the war, what myths surround the topic of disability and his plans for the future.
Until February 24, the team of the “Ba and Di Club” enterprise, founded by Halyna Plotnytska, helped elderly people realize themselves and have an interesting and active life. “Ba and Di Club” employed people of retirement age, which is one of the vulnerable categories of the population. The company solved not only the problems of the elderly, but also of young, working and too busy mothers/daughters, fathers/sons and, of course, children. Precisely this unification of generations, the creation of the most comfortable space in the city for all its residents was the essence of this enterprise.
Today, the social enterprise has partially transformed. Now the “Ba and Di Club” has its own kindergarten, which takes care of children from IDP families. The previous activity of the enterprise has been partially changed but the team does not plan to abandon its efforts and main mission – to unite and employ active elderly people. Read the full story and interview here.
We will continue to bring stories of the grantees of the Rapid Response Grant Program for Social Enterprises.