Victoria Mishchuk, Director of the Open Eyes Charitable Fund, talks about why helping others is a pleasure and how the charity has become an integral part of the IT company.

How the Fund began

The director of the Fund, Victoria Mishchuk, remembers that in 2014 when the war started, the corridors and warehouses of SoftServe were full of clothes and equipment for the Ukrainian military. There was no clear fundraising system; employees simply donated money ad hoc, and the process was coordinated by the Fund’s director, Uliana Budenkevych.

“There were people willing to make their contribution, invest time to help others. And we couldn’t let those huge human resource to fade away ,” Victoria Mishchuk explains.

So they decided to organize the volunteer initiatives and merge them into a single system. That’s how the Fund came about. Since then, it has been successfully demonstrating how an IT company can effectively help those in need.

The Fund’s stand on protecting healthcare professionals

Victoria Mishchuk took up the torch later, and for her it began with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“For me, the Fund started with the pandemic. It was almost like another war, because doctors were just as unarmed in the face of the advancing virus, and no one knew what to do about it. When the cases started to rise, no one in Ukraine had any idea which anti-epidemic drugs were certified and which really worked, but everyone was snapping up all the drugs very quickly,” she recalls.

The company donated UAH 10 million hryvnias for anti-epidemic drugs, which had to be sourced as they were nowhere to be found. A group of around 100 volunteers from the company came together in seven cities to liaise with local healthcare support centers.

In addition to human resources, SoftServe has tapped into its intellectual capabilities: many employees began to learn which lung ventilators were the best and what was the difference between various respirators.

People also actively donated money: UAH 1,000,000 were collected through direct donations on the website, and another UAH 5,000,000 were transferred from tax refunds provided to private entrepreneurs under the unified social tax. In total, in three months, UAH 16,000,000 was raised to help Ukrainian doctors.

“It’s good to have money, but it’s much more important to know how to distribute it so those who really need help get it. It was a big challenge a lot of responsibility for me,” says Victoria Mishchuk.

How does the Fund operate?

Open Eyes is SoftServe’s corporate Fund, created to implement employees’ charitable projects.

“There may be the misconception that the Fund has a lot of money and is throwing it at whatever. But this is not the case. At the beginning of the year, we have no budget at all. The company covers our operating costs, salaries, and logistics,” explains Victoria Mishchuk.

Money to finance projects is raised through a fundraising website. The Fund supports projects in healthcare, education, social sphere and helps Ukrainian defenders. Employees who have an idea for the Fund are free to propose it at any time. If the ambassadors and the board of the Charitable Fund support it, the team takes the project on, it is published on the website, and fundraising starts. Whoever comes up with the idea is given the job of project coordinator on the website.

Anyone can donate money to a charitable initiative, and since 2022 you can do it even from abroad.

“Our employees are our donors. If they are interested in an initiative and want to join it, they donate. The website is open to everyone, but statistics show that 90% of donors are our employees,” says the director of the Fund.

Some projects go on for years in several iterations; they are repeated in various cities with different numbers of participants.

Positive Rooms is one of the long-term projects of the Fund. This is a bright, comfortable and functional space for children in hospitals, where they can have fun, read, catch up on school work, create and, most importantly, get some positive vibes, which helps them to recover faster. In 2016-2017, the Fund implemented this project for the first time at the Wrocław Children’s Clinic of Endocrinology and Diabetology. Later, similar rooms were created in four Ukrainian hospitals, in Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Dnipro and Kharkiv. This year, the project moved on to Lviv, Chernivtsi and Kyiv.

Why is charity important to SoftServe?

Open Eyes is the only example in Ukraine of a charitable fund that has become a separate structural unit of an IT company.

“The Fund is the second heart of the company. One heart conquers the world, opens offices in Mexico or Dubai, and the other helps to direct efforts and resources to where they are needed,” says Victoria Mishchuk.

With a separate unit that manages charitable projects, the company works more efficiently and in a transparent and official way, and the employees feel their contribution to a good cause: they are not just supporting NGOs, but are doing it within the company.

We have more and more of these ambassadors of light who have learned to manage not IT but charitable projects. These people carry the idea forward, teach others, share their experiences with new colleagues and inspire them to join the cause. And we get more volunteers. There are three people now working in the Fund, and we could not have done it without our people on the ground.

BY VICTORIA MISHCHUK | DIRECTOR OF THE OPEN EYES CHARITABLE FUND

How to motivate employees to join the work of the Fund?

According to Victoria Mishchuk, the best way to engage the company’s employees in charity is to show them that their ideas can be implemented. Everyone can submit a project for consideration, raise funding, and implement an inspiring idea.

“The people who come up with ideas often already work with other NGOs. These are great people, with a keen sense of responsibility; they know how to manage projects and educate others. For example, in Ivano-Frankivsk, we have an employee who is into astronomy. He wanted to open an astronomical club for children because there was nothing like it in the city when he himself was little. And he is so passionate about it that he is looking for special telescope lenses, his wife is creating the club’s identity, and he is buying everything he needs to go hiking with the children and look at the stars,” says Victoria.

All this is part of the company’s philosophy, which they call Helpiness, i.e. help plus happiness. SoftServe believes that you can enjoy helping someone. When a person comes to others with an offer of kindness, it benefits everyone.