Funds on the way. Thank you for doing what we can't. And thank you for doing what they say can't be done.
Funds on the way. Thank you for doing what we can't. And thank you for doing what they say can't be done.
tomorrow is payday. will be sending something via PayPal. hashtagukrainewolverines
You guys are awesome!
I'm still pre-coffee, but our little drive has doubled in value overnight! We're currently sitting at $1100!!!
If this momentum keeps up, we're in for a helluva run 
More good news from the Hungary House. Mrs. Hungary reports that she has just received our EKG machine!!!
In the first picture is Atilla, the veterinarian who leveraged his connections and got this 12-channel bad-boy to us at wholesale cost. The money came from the $1000 that my Grandparents donated ("grand" parents? Get it??), plus $100 that was donated from our Swedish friend Susanne.
Grandparents and good friends. Where would we be without them?
I know $1100 on a device doesn't sound like a lot, but a couple things:
1) The vet who helped us get this? He desperately wants one of these but can't even afford to get one for himself (and now he's helped send two into Ukraine).
2) When Vola saw we were bringing one on our last run, he went absolutely bonkers and REALLY tried to get me to send it to him in Kyiv. The quotes that stuck with me the most were:
Eventually I was able to explain to Vola that this was for the "Hospitallers" Battalion (I noticed google translate kept changing that to "Hospitals" so he really didn't understand why I wasn't giving it to him), and that they had rights to first refusal. Needless to say they were equally stoked to have it (and the oxygen concentrator, seriously) so that's where it went. Now we're super stoked to have this along for the children's hospital, and if what Vola said was correct it might be a "1 of 1" in the area
Now if you all don't mind, I need you guys to go search through your respective garages for another oxygen concentrator and we'll be good!
Seriously though: Thank you all for sharing the GFM. The more eyes we can get on this, the better off we are and very dollar we get is one more than we had before. 
Thank you everyone.
Boop!
A little shy for Kisgorbo, but pretty darn close given all we've got going on these days. No matter the balance, I'll transfer what we've collected.
We now have 200,000huf donated locally (Carrie accounts for half of that, as she donated 100,000 to us directly) so I've got that split evenly between school and medical supplies.
Aaaaaand as mentioned earlier, we have JUST over $1100, there in our GoFundMe.
Regarding the soccer balls, and stuffies: I'm currently working with Vikkidp to see if we can get a headcount of children at the hospital or of refugees in the area (only asking for rough estimates).
Good times, y'all.
Alrighty, so today I was "that guy".
GoFundMe said the best way to get your fundraiser more attention was to find people who were "spreaders" (yup. Just like a virus), but how about we use the hub/spoke analogy instead? In short I spent the day looking for places or people where shares for the fundraiser could grow exponentially. I hit just about everyone on my FB friends list where I was sure they hid me years ago (because of my political doom posting) but thought they might be interested in this event. Some of them even wrote back!
After that I joined three Ukrainian Relief groups that I wasn't already a member of. One of my posts has been approved, one is waiting approval, and one request to join is still under consideration.
After THAT I made a post to the Budapest to Bamako's Ukrainian SOS page, but that's been a ghost town lately, so I decided to hit up my B2B teammates too.
And sometime before all that, pre-coffee me chuckled as I started a twitter account and messaged Mila Kunis to ask her to share the fundraiser with her followers (I did not ask for money, but I did try to message Ashton later. Unfortunately his auto-reply said he's not watching his FB account anymore). Hey, they cant say "yes" if you don't ask right? 
The problem is, my old-man "get off my lawn" approach to social media is working against us at the moment. Everyone I message is either an "end user" or will send this to people who are "end users". Somehow we need to get this to someone under 30, who has a good social media presence and a lot of followers... I'm sure we'll think of somethin 
All in all, it wasn't a bad way to kill about 6-hours of the day.
Good times
Getting this thread back to page 1:
Thank you AngryCorvair!!!
I've been making daily updates to the GFM as well, but it looks like the sharing is working! Here's what I wrote today:
Good morning everyone!!!
It looks like the sharing works! Thank you, and keep it goin!
I just saw we crested $1650 today and that's big news to me because that was what we were able to collect on our first run (back in March). That run was the craziest organization of people on Facebook I've ever seen and it took us all of 5-minutes to do it. Here's how it went:
I reached out to a local charity organizer "Andrew Szabo" earlier in the week, and asked if he knew of any refugee or Ukrainian organizations that needed medical supplies. He did, and he gave me a list of needed items.
Myself and another individual (American) went to work locally and placed orders with local pharmacies and medical supply shops. We collected about $1500 in goodies and I brought it to Andrew in Budapest (about a 2-hour drive for me).
"Ok. But, how do we get it to where it's needed in Ukraine?" we asked. On the news, the whole place seemed like it was still a hotbed of fighting!
Out come the phones: I got the goods to Budapest, Andrew can get them to Lviv, but who can take them from there?
5-minutes later we had our response . A Czechian (Czech Republic) man was making a run on towards the capitol and had room in his van. He offered to meet Andrew in Lviv and would take the items to Zhytomyr (Just an hour and a half outside of Kyiv). 5-minutes, that took us!!!
It was a huge victory for me, and was 100% the reason I immediately started planning my own trips into Ukraine. At that moment I knew there must be a million other people just as crazy as we were, doing the same crazy things we were. How else could we possibly stumble upon someone going that close to a place that was still fighting??
2-hours to Budapest seemed like a long drive to me back in March, and $1600 was a LOT of other peoples money to be responsible for. Now 10-hours into Ukraine is more normal (it'll be over 20-hours to drive to Dnipro), but $1600 is still a LOT of good work we can do. And I know it's going to a good place.
Thank you all very much.
Now for the 10-hour drive back to Hungary. Is there a specific number of road trips I need to make before I can start dressing like the guy in the picture (Lord Humungus)?
Asking for a friend...
Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:Thank you AngryCorvair!!!
GWAR at Coachella?
I'm happy to help from a distance. and I'm honored to know you. You are an exemplary man.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Thank you, man. To have such support from so many people is a huge honor, and I hope to do it justice.
Our little fundraiser is just about to tick over $1800!! We're sitting at $1799, and I'm starting to see this pop up more and more in my FB feed which MUST mean people are getting it out there
Heck,even my instagram and linkedin accounts got some attention, and those are basically fossils with all the action I don't give them.
Cheers guys!
^ There was a rather funny yet unfortunate typo in the previous post. I couldn't let it sit uncorrected but I really hope you got the chance to see it. It was hilarious.
wow.
ok, back at a keyboard and no longer on my phone. I wasn't going to do another update but a LOT changed between Saturday and now so I thought I'd log in and post on here:
First up is the Kisgorbo fund. Up 300,000 from where it was on Saturday!
Holy smokes. Ok, I mentioned earlier that I wanted to up Ira's fund and I think this is the right time to do it. Our usual donation to Kisgorbo is being sent to my bank as we speak. Once there I'll kick it over to Mayor Kozma. Of the remaining 200,000huf I'm going to add an extra 100,000huf to Ira's fund and deliver it to her on Wednesday if she's available. That would bring her total received up to 150,000huf.
The remaining 100,000huf we have this month, I thought would hold back until I get a good feel for where it's needed. Donations to the GoFundMe have slowed, but that doesn't mean that fight is over. I'd like to see how that ends on the 7th, and then I get the feeling we'll know where the 100,000huf is most needed.
And speaking of deliveries, my last truckload to Pastor Kovacs was loaded this morning (no rest for the wicked). Kind of bittersweet that one, and I don't know how else to explain it. As I load things up that were once so desperately needed: Diapers, baby food, feminine hygiene products... Supplies that would come in as fast as we could get them out... I remember my relief when donations eventually caught up with demand and then concern when demand started tapering off, eventually becoming a trickle. One day incoming supplies just dried up completely, and demand became non-existent...
Now there's this truck full of our stuff, and for the first time the people receiving them will have the pick of our crop. After that, whatever's left will go to locals in need.
One delivery I'm excited to make, though is Mayor Kozma's next issue of Classic Motorsports.
He's going to get a kick out of this one.
Good times.
In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :
but did that typo last more than four hours?
30 to 35
Thirty to thirty-five. That's how many children we'll be delivering to in Dnipro's hospital. VikkiDp told me that earlier today and that number is 100% exactly where I was hoping it would be. I'll admit the reason I was hoping it would be in that ballpark is kind of silly:
That number is exactly where I needed it to be for our soccer ball and stuffy deliveries.
We currently have 3 soccer balls, and I have the cash for one more (which I'm going to spend here shortly) and that's a perfect ratio of soccer balls to kids. Taking another step forward we currently have 18 stuffies (plush toys, or stuffed animals, if you're not familiar with the reference), and we had that extra 100,000huf after we increased Ira's donation amount (TBD tomorrow). This is the perfect amount of money to buy the exact amount of stuffies we need to make sure every kid in the hospital gets one.
I LOVE it when a plan comes together.
I've decided that I'm going to take the Hungarlings back to that local toy store and let them go nuts picking out stuffed animals for the children. It'll be a good experience for them.
On our GoFundMe account, the donations seem to have slowed around $1884.00 but trust me, I'm not complaining. These are some awesome results but I think we're seeing the end of the chapter that was "My social media presence" so we just need to find a way to turn the page. To that end, I've taken the advice of a friend of mine who used to run a charity that took veterans with PTSD out in Kayaks to go fishing up in Washington state. A real GRM effort, that organization was basically run by him and his buddies, and they used their own kayaks and fishing gear.
Anyhoo, he said that when he hit a ceiling like we are now, he would reach out to authors who had written about their efforts previously and just inform them of what they were going to do next. The rest comes naturally.
Easily enough, but no one but one person outside of GRM has ever written anything about me before. So to that end, I've decided to expand on his advice a bit and I started hitting up my favorite automotive authors and youtube hosts (MightyCarMods, Doughnut Media, Eric Rood, David Freiburger.... all of them. Anyone I could think of.).
More locally, I started googling "automotive enthusiasts Ukraine humanitarian aid" and from those results I wrote a few authors who published, what I thought were, well written articles. Unfortunately most of them are UK based because of my current geographic and language influence on google results... but you never know. Something might bite!
As of this writing, "Hagerty" and "Euro Weekly Newspaper" have written me back. "Hagerty" sent me an e-mail address to forward my message to (that was sent from a real person!), and "Euro Weekly" has asked for my e-mail address and phone number (just in case). I'm callin that "a dang good sign".
Either way, I've learned something new through every step of our efforts out here. And when it comes crowd sourcing I'll admit to thinking these "GoFundMe" things were WAY easier than they actually are before I started this. Here's how I always assumed these things went:
1) Create a GoFundMe for something you think is important.
2) Other people magically see it (because "internet") and shower you with riches.
3) Those people showering you with riches increase in number and intensity until your effort absolutely EXPLODES.
4) Your donation is made, and people latch on to the next "viral" effort.
oof.
The reality is much much different... Having this thing in operation is like having a third full time job, yo! Why cant this be as easy as the news stories make it out to be???
Ok, back to being serious: Fingers crossed for this next chapter. Now that we've turned the page, I'm pretty excited to see where the story goes.
Cheers everyone.
In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) : Awesome work sir! Much needed visibility for the project. I copied you kn a request out to another auto site that might be a way to reach more like minded gear heads and their friends.
84FSP said:In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) : Awesome work sir! Much needed visibility for the project. I copied you kn a request out to another auto site that might be a way to reach more like minded gear heads and their friends.
I saw that, thank you! That was dang well written, fingers crossed they pick it up.
All good sir - it's a very compelling and enjoyable story that I think will play really well. AngryCorvair tossed a few lines in the water to Haggerty and Radwood as well.
Aw beautiful!
You guys let me know if you need anything at all. I can send you the original photos, and everything!
Thank you!
Ladies and gentlemen, I continue to update the GFM so please feel free to give it a look if you were so inclined. However, I wanted to share some good and important news with you about our donations to Ira's art therapy.
I remember before our first trip to Lviv, Ira was working from her office and reported being low on supplies. We've made a couple donations now (we've made two, Carrie has made two as well) and along the way Ira's little operation has grown into a "program".
She now reports that they have 60 Ukrainian refugee children in attendance at their program, and even better: They are officially applying with the Hungarian government to become a school.
Now, we're not the only donations they get to help them out. She mentioned they get some from UNICEF (as well as a few other organizations), but with regards to OUR donations here's what she said:
(when you read this, try to imagine she was quite excited)
"it's free! There's no paperwork! You don't have expectations we have to stress to meet! We don't need to ask permission! We can see something (a need) and buy something (to fix it). We can try ideas, it's so great!"
and I thought you guys would like to hear that.
I think that might also be why she always seems so hesitant to ask us for more money. I made sure to tell her that we're still keeping a fund available for her, and she can draw from it any time.
I mentioned to you guys earlier that I would like to bump Ira's fund up to 150,000huf, but I don't want to over-stretch us. I'm thinking I'll up her fund to 100,000 on paper, and if that goes well then we'll up it again to 150,000.
Going back a step: She also gave me a tour and showed me the storage room. I am really not kidding when I say she still has some of our last donations still on her shelf. She is a wonderful example of effectiveness mixed with frugality, and the place looks amazing.
I'm going to switch to my mobile now, and attach a few pictures I have that she sent:
Will do sir!
Someone I hold in very high regard now calls me "friend". We've been "talking" for a couple hours now.
Meet your heroes 
(And if you don't know why I'm a blob of mush right now, please watch the following: https://youtu.be/MJUF3E27oTU )
In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :
That is so cool.
Aaron_King said:In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :
That is so cool.
Thanks man. it just seems so surreal!
Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we have a note from Mayor Kozma:
Dear Bill,
Thank you for your patience and for your continued support on behalf of our refugees. A lot has happened since my last letter. We had a permanent number for about a month and a half, but in the last four weeks another three mothers with three children arrived.
I pay special attention for making sure that, our refugees are really people in need, whom we help together. Each family is a different (sad) story. For me, it is important that they come from a war zone or are evacuated. Unfortunately, many times people abuse the goodwill of helpers. Taking advantage of the war and the chaotic conditions that have arisen with it, they are leaving Ukraine in order to obtain a better livelihood, donations and aid for themselves. There are plenty of them. That's what I'm trying to filter out. These people (families) are coming across the border several times for new clothes, better food, fuel, and supply etc. then return to Ukraine. We have had examples of this.
There are currently 17 refugees at the Shelter. Unfortunately, the number of people is not decreasing, but increasing. There is still no male refugee here. From August, I organize kindergarten for the little ones, and from September, 3 school-age children have to start primary school on a mandatory basis (ages 8, 13, 13). You can imagine, after these traumatic times, skipping more than half of the school year, and they need to fit into another culture, school, country. In addition, there is neither a kindergarten nor a school in the village.
It was also necessary to strengthen the safety of the shelter (grids, cameras). They have asked for this, because the goal is to refer to themselves as soon as possible, which is a very slow, problematic process. There's always something going on, but safety comes first, after all. That's why they left their homeland.
There is always room for money, but the helpers and physical donations are slowly running out, they have run out. There is no longer any news value to the War in Ukraine!
I'm proud of you because you and the motorsport community still stand by us. In August, we will have 5 months to take care of them, help them every day.
This Sunday we will take all 17 people on a full-day trip, beach trip, lunch, ice cream, and a sunset Balaton Lakecruise. We will print language books for them, and start teaching Hungarian language twice a week with volunteers. With me in the lead. We also try to please them with trifles, keep their birthdays or buy them seasonal things. (melons, corn, ice cream, etc...)
So, we live, we work. Once again, a thousand thanks for joining forces.
Kozma Gabor
P.S : I'm going to marry the man who gets me a steering gear for my old 1976 Daimler Double Six car!!!! I've been chasing it for half a year, but I just don't get anywhere. The current one, unfortunately, is beyond repair.Grassroots, in case you find one at home, please send it to me immediately. Bill, that is the reason I could not visit you until now.
What sayest the group. Shall we get this man a steering gear for his double-six?
I'm assuming he means "steering box", but will wait for a yay or nay from the group before I ask for clarification
In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :
Steering gear = steering box. That's still in use in some parts catalogs and among some (probably older) people here in the states.
I'm trying to generate a blurb about the GFM campaign for publication in our next company newsletter. The gal who is helping me organize it actually lived in Szeged for a bit while in school. She casually mentioned having been to Balaton. The world just keeps getting smaller.
You are deserving of the friendship with Mr Meyer. The duck looks good on you!
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