Grant Programme We Love Ukraine
In 2024 and 2025, with the support of Global Giving, we implemented the We Love Ukraine 3.0 grant call, through which we distributed nearly €60,000. We provided financial support to five specific organizations that have been offering long-term assistance to Ukrainian displaced people in eastern Slovakia, helping them build a safe and meaningful life here. A total of 1,200 refugees received direct support, but the program had a much broader impact — reaching even into Ukraine. Read more here.
The third round built on We Love Ukraine 2.0, through which we distributed €80,000 in 2023 to support seven projects, providing assistance to 1,064 refugees in Slovakia — half of them children. The funding helped NGOs, schools, and local municipalities make their support for refugees more systematic, long-term, and sustainable — ensuring lasting assistance for people displaced from Ukraine.
The entire We Love Ukraine grant program was established in the wake of the full-scale war in Ukraine, as large numbers of Ukrainians were fleeing to Slovakia in search of safety. Its aim was to provide financial support to organizations, schools, and municipalities assisting refugees at the border and within communities in eastern Slovakia. In 2022, we distributed €172,247 across 48 projects focused on providing humanitarian aid, housing, childcare support, access to education, assistance with obtaining necessary documents and communicating with public authorities, support with entering the job market, and psychosocial care for people arriving from Ukraine who had been traumatized by the war. The grant scheme responded to the needs of all refugees, while placing particular emphasis on vulnerable groups such as mothers with young children, seniors, people with disabilities, Roma, and LGBTI+ individuals. Support was delivered through low-threshold, administratively simple grants, with decisions made on a weekly basis. Through this approach, 14,000 refugees from Ukraine received support.
Funding for the We Love Ukraine program was allocated from the Carpathian Foundation’s Crisis Fund, which is used to respond to acute crisis situations of local, regional, or global nature. This fund also included contributions from the We Love Ukraine fundraising campaign, as well as support from donors and partners (see below). The first round was also funded through a donor campaign we launched on Donio.sk.
The We Love Ukraine Fundraising Campaign
After the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, and the resulting large-scale refugee crisis across Europe, we launched the We Love Ukraine fundraising campaign via Donio.sk. Our goal was to raise funds to help people arriving in Slovakia who were in urgent need of food, warm clothing, hygiene supplies, shelter, support, and many other essentials.
Raising Awareness
Disinformation and hoaxes spread by pro-Kremlin propaganda influenced a portion of public opinion in Slovakia, leading some people to oppose support for refugees from Ukraine. That is why, as part of our activities, we also focused on raising public awareness and fostering empathy around the importance of continued solidarity with refugees. We created a wide range of content for our social media channels, wrote articles, gave interviews, and also produced and published video documentaries and podcasts. Through these efforts, we reached a total of 338,432 users — including social media audiences, viewers, and readers.
The video From War to Paradise tells the story of a young woman, Olha Kalinenko, who was forced to flee from the bombed city of Kyiv to protect her young daughter and start a new life in a completely unfamiliar country, without her husband. Over time, her sister Anastasia joined her, and together they made their way to a small village in the Slovenský raj (Slovak Paradise), where they found new friendships with local residents. The video captures both difficult times and beautiful moments, as well as powerful personal stories.
A shorter version of the video can be viewed HERE
The video captures the work and daily life of the Ukrainian-Slovak HUB in Kežmarok (a project supported through the We Love Ukraine grant program), highlighting the needs of refugees living in the town as well as their contributions to the local community.
The women did not come to Slovakia in search of a better life — they left Ukraine to protect their children. What they want is to create a space where their children can feel safe, experience joy, and no longer have to think constantly about their father and the war. Victorya Bondarenko arrived in Slovakia in 2018. After the war began, she founded a support center in Košice for Ukrainian mothers and their children. In the first short video, she shares the story of many Ukrainian families — as well as her own. In the second video, she talks about the important activities of the Radosť Center.
Through the We Love Ukraine grant program, the organization Ženský algoritmus created the Women2Women project to support Ukrainian women in finding work, gaining new knowledge and experience, and forming a strong, empowering community in Slovakia.
An interview with Regina Lovišková sheds light on the trauma experienced by refugees from Ukraine and on how art therapy helps them process it — along with others facing trauma or emotional distress. The article was published on the online news platform Aktuality.sk.
Partners and supporters of the We Love Ukraine programme and awareness-raising activities:
- Benevity
- Fondation de France
- Fondazione Donor Italia diventa Fondo Filantropico Italiano
- Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Slovakia, s. r. o.
- EPAM Systems
- Global Giving
- King Baudouin Fondation
- Maecenata Stiftung
- NESS KE, s. r. o.
- Porticus
- Róbert Kollár
- Slovenský plynárenský priemysel
- The Academy for the Development of Philanthropy in Poland – Global Challenges Local Solutions (GCLS) – The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
- The Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF)
- The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
- Donio – Initiative Who Will Help Ukraine.
- Donors who supported our We Love Ukraine appeal through Donio and direct donations to our account.