Does individual help make sense?

Sometimes when we encourage our friends to support the REACT Foundation, carrying out aid to Ukraine, we hear that although they support our activities, they have doubts whether their help would make any difference, especially when compared with government aid. This approach may be understandable. After all, we hear so much about the multi-million-dollar aid that the Polish government provided to Ukraine by donating military equipment, or about subsequent tranches amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars provided by Western countries. 

We prefer to help one person rather than Ukraine because we feel that our help is only a drop which won’t change anything. After all, what is PLN 100 when compared with millions that flow to this country? If we realize the difference between state aid and aid provided by foundations, we will understand that every monetary amount of individual aid is extremely important. The quickest way to explain this difference is by saying that state aid influences the fate of war while individual aid often decides about the life or death of an individual soldier. Foundations do not buy tanks, planes or rocket launchers – this type of aid comes from state entities.

However, the REACT Foundation can, through its fundraising activities, buy equipment needed by soldiers from specific brigades. These include dressings, tourniquets and equipment used by soldiers to secure their positions or locate the enemy, such as drones, collimators and night-vision devices. We also buy cars making it possible to increase logistic capabilities of brigades and transport wounded soldiers from the battlefield. So while governments operate on a macro scale (the state), we operate on a micro scale (the individual).

We don’t win wars. We rescue people.