Ukraine used to be known as the “breadbasket” of Europe but now, because of the war, many people in Ukraine are going hungry. Who will step into the gap and help feed Ukraine during this time of need? Today, Daniel King interviews Yuriy Boyechko. His organization “Hope for Ukraine” is providing humanitarian aid and spiritual support to the people of Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing war.
Key points:
- Boyechko’s organization distributes 1,500 food kits to families in frontline towns in Ukraine each week, as the country has gone from being the “breadbasket of Europe” to facing severe poverty and famine.
- The organization also runs an internally displaced persons center that provides shelter, meals, and opportunities for spiritual growth, with over 3,000 individuals visiting the center and many coming to faith in Christ.
- Boyechko’s own background as the son of a Pentecostal pastor in Ukraine has shaped his commitment to sharing the gospel while providing practical aid.
- As the war continues, Boyechko sees the long-term need to provide counseling, job training, and other support to help rebuild lives and find spiritual healing in Ukraine.
Learn more about Hope for Ukraine: https://hfu.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:19):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus Today. I have a very special guest with me. Yuri, thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (00:32):
Thanks for having me. Thank you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:34):
You are working in Ukraine. Ukraine has been in the news a lot lately because of the war. Tell me, what is the situation on the ground in Ukraine and what are you doing to help?
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (00:47):
Yeah, so I’m founder and CEO of for Ukraine. So we’ve been, it’s a humanitarian aid organization that we’ve been working on the ground in Ukraine since 2016, way before the full scale war and after full scale war that took place in February, 2022. Our main ministry in Ukraine has been distributing food kits to family needs. So on average right now we provide 1500 foot kids to families living in frontline towns where the full scale war is taking place. So right now, I mean we are two and a half years into the full scale war and what we see on the ground is how they say after afterwards, famine comes in and we see a huge number of people that are falling behind poverty lines because all just the regular citizens, the ones who had some kind of savings, they have exhausted that. And also Ukraine before the war was a bread basket of Europe as far as the grain production and everything that’s been cultivated in there.
(02:19):
But right now because of shellings and bombings, a lot of fertile soil that was cultivated before farmers are not able to use. So basically we see the Ukraine as a country going from being a bread basket of the Europe to become a baggers of Europe. And that’s me as a Ukrainian. I came here when I was 16, so I lived in Ukraine 16 years. My life, it’s set to see how evil forces of devil I can use something like war to just rev whole country and destroy mailings of lives. So I mean the situation is bleak. I mean it’s not here in the US and other parts of the world. It’s not on the frontline line on the news, but because other things have come up, but we work on the ground every day and we see that things are not getting better, they’re getting worse, they’re getting worse for regular citizens and families that we serve.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:33):
And so in this time of desperation, how is your organization able to help the people on the ground in Ukraine? Tell me what’s happening on a day-to-day basis.
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (03:47):
So just to give you an idea that we feed in 15, a hundred families each week. We give them food kit and a foot kit, and the food kit can feed a family of poor people up to 10 days. So the way the process works, we have our hub that’s located in Louis Ukraine, that’s a western Ukraine close to Polish border. And then we work with about a hundred different partners all across Ukraine. Many of them are faith-based organizations. So every day we have two to three volunteering events that come to our big warehouse in Weave. They load up with the food kits and they bring into hard head zones. So most of our areas that we serve are folks in the Nets region, Herson region, McLay region, Haki region, Summa Region. A lot of these territories, for example in Herson region, they used to be occupied by Russians.
(04:56):
So folks live there, the infrastructure has been completely destroyed. Some of the families, they have not had light or running water there for two years. So basically for them, these food kits that our volunteers bring, it’s basically a lifeline because there is no steady supply. There’s not a supermarket where you can go in and buy stuff. And so that’s what we do every day and that’s our main program. The second one will also provide afterschool program for children of war where we give kids opportunity after school to go to arts and craft classes. So we have tutoring opportunities because we understand that right now in Ukraine, most of the kids are raised by single mothers because most of the male population in the army defending the country, a lot of them have been, just to give you an idea, right now in Ukraine there is a 70,000 ties.
(06:12):
And just to give you a comparison, France, which is twice the size of Ukraine as far as population goes, they have about 20,000 altogether. So you’re looking at a lot of folks, a lot of dads who come back home and they not capable of supporting families no more. So a lot of that falls on mother’s shoulders. So we as the organization trying to support them by giving the kids free access to afterschool program. Also we run internal displaced center in review Ukraine, the same place where we have our warehouse, we have a big living quarters where we take in folks who run from the front line, we place them there and then we try to find them permanent place to stay, whether it’s in Ukraine in the western side of Ukraine, some of them they moved to central Europe and stuff.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:21):
What is happening spiritually in Ukraine, often when there is peace, people become complacent spiritually, but then in times of war and displacement, people start turning to God for help. And so what are some of the spiritual needs and what is your organization doing to help people spiritually?
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (07:47):
So first of all, just to give you an idea, in our refugee center we have a chapel there. So all the folks who come there and stay there, most of them don’t know Christ, dunno about God. So every Sunday we have church service there where we don’t force anybody to go there, but we encourage them to come. And a lot of people who came through the doors of our center eventually dedicated their life to Jesus. So just to give you an idea, since the start of the full scale war, I think we had over 3000 individuals who came through these doors and some of them, so the way our center works is they don’t have a time limit how long they can stay there. It’s not like we give them two weeks and you got to get out. Some of them been living there for a year, year and a half, and some of them, and that’s what I see the best method to preach gospel is through your lifestyle. Some these folks, they come to the center and everybody, all staff that all who work there, they born and believers, and by the way they’ve been treated by the way we taken care of them. They start asking me, can I find out what’s different about you guys? Let me hear about the good news of Jesus Christ. And that’s a lot of them has been become devoted Christians by watching our team and our staff conduct them themself in a Christ manner.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:31):
Are you actively doing events where you are sharing the gospel with people and helping them to come to faith in Christ?
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (09:41):
So we do food distribution events and humanitarian distribution events almost weekly, whether it’s for displaced folks or the people in the frontline. So before each event we have someone who shared the word and the pray for them and letting them know that the best hope is found in Jesus because some of them come through, they went through hell and back. And a lot of them they question if God exists, why He has allowed me to go through all this horror that I’m going through. And we use each and every opportunity to let them know that no matter how bad the current situation is that Jesus still got their back, but places like her son, her son is, it’s been liberated but still under constant attacks, right by auxiliary drones and stuff like that on Sundays, churches packed there and after every service there, our volunteers there, they cook fresh meals for them folks who come there. So it’s this time of desperation. I think we see a lot of people open to the gospel more and more. And because we have a lot of opportunities because of these constant eight give giveaway events, there’s events that we serve thousand people at a time. It’s like a small crusade. And so to some of our partners, they put Bible verse on the foot bags that they give away to people. So every chance, all our partners are faith-based, they use every opportunity to tell people about God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:10):
Tell me a little bit about your story. I saw that you graduated from Regent University and how did you get started doing this type of ministry in Ukraine?
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (12:23):
Yeah, so my story is I come from a family of Protestant bishop. My father is a Pentecostal bishop in Ukraine. He’s still alive, he lives in iv. When I was four years old, he was actually put to prison by communists for preaching gospel for smuggling the Bible into Ukraine during those days. So there was 1986 and he did two years there for that. So basically as far as serving people, serving God, and that’s always been integrated in our family. Then I came here, I did undergrad in Zion Bible college that’s in Rhode Island. And then I went to do film in region university. So after that I spent some time in the media industry. But my whole life, whatever I did as far as a business or my daily life, I was trying to use my talent and my ability to represent Christ right in every marketplace I was in.
(13:45):
So the way hopefully Ukraine started is that there was annexation of Crimea that took place in 2014. And at that time we already saw first wave of refugees and also on the ground we’ve seen a lot of, there was a lot of kids was treatable medical conditions that because the parents didn’t have money to pay for extra medical treatments, these diseases would progress in their lives. So that’s how we started to try to help these families who were poor, who were kids who were sick. And then little but little, I believe this is all been designed by God from the beginning because I never studied, I never plan on studying nonprofits. And nonprofit is really hard grueling kind of work. It’s not like business where you have a goods and you sell it and then you get money back here it’ss a different story. But God used everything to set the platform when 2022 would come because just to give you an idea, since the full scale war, think right now we have served 97 million meals in Ukraine.
(15:15):
So with that amount and 1500 families a week, and that’s basically 1500 opportunities to tell someone about Jesus each week. So I would never be able to do it through a regular means of evangelism like going on a stadium. So I think it’s this tool and this organization, God used greatly to take so many people out of poverty, give people hope and tell them about Christ. We don’t can keep the records of how many selections or whatever, but I know just if the snapshot from the people who come through our doors in the center, those 3000 something individual, I mean I know about 80% of them have found Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:22):
That’s amazing. It’s horribly tragic what is happening in Ukraine. And eventually I pray the war will come to an end and when that happens, there’s going to be so much ministry that needs to be done in Ukraine for many years to come. I mean the scars from this war are going to be long and deep lasting. What role do you see that your organization will have in helping to heal after the war is over?
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (17:01):
I mean it’s all of the about, because what we see right now is about 80% of kids have some kind of post-traumatic disorders now developed by war, right? We have a lot of people who struggle with insomnia because of the constant air rates that and anxiety, fear and anger. I mean, you got to understand that the healing process after everything’s said and done is going to be the whole generation because some of the questions that we get a lot, God is so good and why this happening to our country? Why this happen to my family? And that’s something that we will have to work with to try to rebuild these lives, to rebuild them spiritually, emotionally, and also on the regular level as far as getting folks at home job education. Because just to give you an idea that most of the folks, they lived okay life before 2022.
(18:35):
And if all of a sudden you lose everything, you have no home to go to, you have no job, your career, everything. And basically all you have is you have one mattress to sleep on now and two meals a day to eat. And you have no way what you’re going to do with your life. This is basically, I mean, it’s very hard for these individuals to process. So us as a organization, I think we are going to get involved a lot into counseling, rebuilding lives. And I think the most important is for these people to find closure. For them to understand that, okay, no matter what happened, the God still has a plan for me. And the way forward is to finding Jesus anchoring my life into him and then he will be that person next to me who will never leave me or forsake me. So no matter what happened to me. So I think that’s where we will go right now. We still in emergency response and we do what we can because I always tell that I feel like I’m a firefighter. I have to this fire one day we plan on doing Christmas gifts for Christmas season and then we are dealing with energy crisis. So we have to divert into providing January this, right? So that’s where we at right now. But I think long run, it’s going to be rebuilding lives and helping these families to get reestablished again.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:19):
Well, thank you so much for what you’re doing to help the people of Ukraine during this very crucial time. God has prepared you for such a time as this. If someone is listening and they have a heart to help Ukraine, maybe they want to help to feed people, what is the website or a way that they can get in touch with you, find out more about your organization?
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (20:47):
Yeah, they can go to our website, hvu.org and they can find more there. They can contribute over our feeding program. They can learn more how they can help in Ukraine. So it’s hf.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:05):
And that stands for hope for Ukraine, HFU,
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (21:08):
Correct? Yeah. Hope for Ukraine. Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:11):
Wonderful. Well, let’s finish by praying for Ukraine and would you pray, but instead of praying in English, could you pray in Ukrainian for the people of Ukraine?
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (21:27):
Sure.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:01):
Amen. Well, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism podcast.
Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (22:06):
Thank you Daniel.
