Skip to main content

Many areas in Ukraine are in a state of war after the attack by Russian forces. Regardless of who has started the conflict: The people in Ukraine are suffering and many are forced to seek refuge – which includes Germany. The WirHelfen magazine provides you with trustworthy information and explains how you can help the people, both here in Germany and in Ukraine.

Here’s how you can help

Many people feel helpless regarding the situation. Nevertheless, there are several ways you can support people in need.

  • Get information from different media and properly researched sources.
  • Participate in petitions or peace campaigns, or contact your local MP and demand proactive political action.
  • Show visibility and go to a political demonstration.
  • Donate to trustworthy organisations.
  • Try to find out what material goods are needed and share what you no longer need.
  • Spread the word and share offers of help with other people.
  • Register as a volunteer on the WirHelfen platform (also in the new category “Help for Ukraine”).

Become active and take initiative

Find out if there are any relief efforts in your area, for example, calls for donations, help with translating or housing refugees. For those who can, it is best to donate money. By the way, this applies to almost every crisis in which reputable donation accounts are set up. For a targeted monetary donation, there are many recognized german and international organizations such as wie „Aktion Deutschland hilft“, „Deutsches Rotes Kreuz“ und „Save the Children“, to name a few. If you want to focus specifically on helping children in the current and other crises, you can donate to the organizations “Voices of Children”, the “SOS Children’s Villages” or “Help for Traumatized Children”.

We at WirHelfen.eu believe that neither Russia nor “the Russians” are directly responsible for the war, but the government lead by Vladimir Putin. So you can also make a statement by protesting against or boycotting companies and associations that are loyal to the government: These support the Russian government directly or flush money into the Russian treasury. And that in turn indirectly supports the war in Ukraine.

Katapult-Knicker: Hilfe für die Ukraine

Grafik: Katapult-Magazin gGmbH – Knicker Russlandkriese – CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 – Lizenz 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

WirHelfen platform: offer support in the “Help for Ukraine” section.

We at WirHelfen.eu have built a digital, free platform to bring together those seeking help and those helping.

For this reason, we at WirHelfen.eu are currently working at full speed to provide concrete help to people in Ukraine and refugees from Ukraine. Here, we have already compiled an extensive list of offers of help for refugees in Hamburg.

Through our free, digital help platform WirHelfen.eu you can register as a helper and immediately start to help people. Soon we will add the section “Help for Ukraine” where you will be able to easily and quickly register when you need help or want to offer help. On WirHelfen.eu you can search for requests and offers in the inquiries and offers section.

In this way, we would like to help people all over Germany to connect with each other in a goal-oriented, quick and easy way – be it for collecting donations, hosting refugees, or directly exchanging help.

Here you can inform yourself about the war in Ukraine

In heated or worrisome moments, it is first important to stay calm and get an overview of the situation. Then it usually becomes clear, quite quickly, where you can help. However, getting information from reliable sources in a war or crisis situation is not always easy. There are several ways to figure out which sources of information are reliable.

Basic Tips

  • View photos and videos from sources you can’t evaluate with scepticism.
  • Consult content from credible, independent media.
  • Think carefully about if and what information you choose to share.
  • If you are extremely upset by all the information, take a break and talk to other people about it.

The public and serious private media in Germany offer a lot of factual information and commentary on radio, TV and the Internet. Here you can find a large amount of clearly prepared information on the Ukraine war relatively quickly.

Here, you can start with an initial overview:

If you want to find out about the impact of the crisis and relief efforts across Europe, you can also check out the page of the European Parliament. The Federal Foreign Office also provides information.

The Donetsk GK (in Dnipro) and the Embassy in Kiev are temporarily closed. Nevertheless, there are contact points at the Foreign Office for those affected by the crisis and for those helping:

Find here some articles that are related to helping Ukrainians (in German):

Among the many TV channels, websites and social media channels offering information, the independent Katapult magazine  also stands out with understandably presented and solidly researched information. On their Instagram account, they regularly post visualizations of updates on the situation and offer accompanying posts that explain the graphics and maps in detail.

The online magazine Perspective Daily reports information with a straightforward approach/more traditional approach. Here you can find different perspectives on the Ukraine crisis. Among them is also an article on specific offers of help.

If you prefer to listen to information about the Ukraine crisis, we recommend the episode „Autonome sozialistische Sowjetrepublik” from the podcast series „Eine Stunde History” on Spotify. There it explains the background of the war (in German).

Contributions and actions for the solidarity with artists and cultural workers in Ukraine are summarized by the magazine kulturnews on kulturnews.de in the section „Solidarität mit Ukraine“.

Use Ukrainian sources as well, an English-language network for this is Razom For Ukraine, for example. It belongs to the non-governmental organization Razom, which specializes in human rights.

Donation accounts of aid organizations

Find additional reputable donation accounts here in the donation info „Nothilfe Ukraine” of the Deutschen Zentralinstitut für soziale Fragen (DZI).

Hilfe für die Ukraine: Auf einer Friedendesmo hält eine blonde, hellhäutige Frau mit gelber Wollmütze ein Plakat hoch.

S. V. / K. H.

Redaktion/Editorial

Redaktion/Editorial

Behind the WirHelfen magazine editorial team is a small team of accomplished authors, foreign language and audio/video professionals, and equally highly motivated newcomers to the media field: international, diverse, interested, committed, enthusiastic, and - we hope - inspiring.