Eli Malkovskiy is a first-year medical student at the University of Rochester and an editor and social media manager for Humanitarian Voices – a human-centered storytelling organization that elevates the voices of global community leaders, humanitarians, advocates, and changemakers who have uplifted people around the world.
Humanitarian Voices was established in April 2022 by Harrison Zhang – who is currently a first-year MD-PhD student at Stanford University – in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since then, our entirely student-led organization has grown to nine graduate and undergraduate students from Stanford University, Columbia University, the University of Rochester, and the City College of New York. For the last two years, Humanitarian Voices has written about individuals and organizations – ranging from college students to large-scale organizations raising millions of dollars in fundraising – that have stepped up in the most dire moments to help people and animals impacted by the Russo-Ukraine War. A selection of these noble efforts includes advocating for continued support for Ukraine on Capitol Hill, fundraising for medical supplies for Ukrainian hospitals, and serving millions of hot meals in local communities affected by warfare. It has been our privilege and honor to be entrusted with the purpose and vision of our article subjects as we tell their stories of service, sacrifice, and humanity.
The creation of our stories begins with our dedicated outreach team. Their principal duty is to seek out ordinary citizens who have decided to take matters into their own hands after witnessing injustice. The outreach team uses a multifaceted approach by finding people as they document their work on social media, meeting them on university campuses, or (as with our article on the Veselka restaurant in NYC) grabbing dinner and getting to meet the restaurant’s owner. After reviewing samples of their work or reading their biographies, our outreach team then curates questions for each individual to document their inspiring work through a one-on-one interview. Using these interview responses, our talented editorial team works closely with the subjects to craft an article that accurately illustrates their story and conveys their devout sense of purpose in life. With the help of social media, we have received over 100,000 reads to date on our articles!
As we approached our two-year anniversary of learning about and publicizing the diverse journeys of noble humanitarians for Ukraine, we as a team have reviewed our values and reflected on what contemporary humanitarianism means for us. We believe that taking the initiative to address a struggling community’s needs, no matter the size of the step taken – whether it is organizing a fundraiser or working directly on the ground in areas of conflict – represents the values of humanitarianism. Humanitarian Voices takes on this spirit as we perform our part in helping Ukraine’s recovery efforts, as an important aim of our articles is to keep our readers and followers informed about the crisis in Ukraine. However, from our interviews with advocates for Ukraine, a critical issue is that the public is becoming accustomed to the war in Ukraine now that it has been going on for more than two years. With this, it is becoming harder by the day for humanitarian organizations to fundraise and gather resources for Ukraine. For instance, in our interview with Tanya Kotelnykova, the CEO of Brave Generation, she emphasized how difficult it has been to find enough academic mentors, especially as the number of Ukrainian youth seeking mentorship through her organization is growing rapidly.
Humanitarian Voices is actively resisting this war fatigue through our storytelling. As we document the stories of advocates and humanitarians, we often start our stories from their childhoods. We make sure to understand the events that shaped their futures and inspired them to pursue the admirable work we write about in the rest of the article. Our aim in this kind of human-centric storytelling is to help our dedicated readers build a lasting, personal connection with the people working to bring change to Ukraine.
Reading the news about the atrocities happening in Ukraine can be overwhelming, and people may choose to distance themselves from this war – thus becoming accustomed to it. Therefore, Humanitarian Voices offers an alternative method for our readers to stay connected to the current events in Ukraine. Our articles tell the story of unity, recovery, and future-thinking change that is rarely spoken about in the news. For instance, Brave Generation is educating and empowering high school and college students with leadership skills, preparing them to serve as Ukraine’s future leaders and rebuild their country following the war. Likewise, World Central Kitchen is bolstering the self-sustainability of Ukraine’s restaurants and grocery stores by supporting them in feeding their local communities. We hope that reading these positive, human-centered stories will improve people’s confidence in Ukraine’s post-war future, and thus motivate them to stay informed on the crisis in Ukraine and support organizations involved in Ukraine’s recovery.
In February 2024, Humanitarian Voices was recognized by Ukraine on Campus, and I had the privilege to attend the 2024 TCUP Conference at Harvard University on behalf of our organization. This conference was a unique experience to hear from the experts in Ukrainian studies and participate in international dialogue to learn new perspectives on the humanitarian and geopolitical crisis in Ukraine. It was incredibly valuable to meet and be surrounded by many students like me and my teammates at Humanitarian Voices, who are passionate about advocating for and defending Ukraine on their college campuses. Being surrounded by this passion and dedication refueled my motivation to continue advocating for Ukraine through Humanitarian Voices.
Unfortunately, the ongoing war in Ukraine is not the only humanitarian crisis the world is suffering from. Now that our team has grown and we have the increased manpower to do so, we feel a moral calling to write about additional humanitarian crises that impact many but receive relatively insufficient media coverage. In addition to continuing to cover the crisis in Ukraine, we are thrilled to expand the focus of our articles to include individuals who have provided humanitarian aid to underserved and marginalized communities, or who have done work to address the gap in technological literacy and access. We greatly look forward to discovering more incredible people who are actively making a difference in the world and sharing their journeys with our audience, one story at a time.
To learn more about our organization and to read our impactful stories, please visit the Humanitarian Voices website. Also, please check out our social media pages to keep up with our publications:
Instagram: @humanitarian.voices
Twitter: @HumanitarianVo
LinkedIn: Humanitarian Voices