With almost a third of the myOnvent team either based in or from Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine has been felt close to home. Earlier this month, we brought the whole team together to support each other, share our stories and find ways to help people in Ukraine. We thought we should share some of our team’s stories with you.

The importance of coming together
The most powerful thing to come out of our Team Meeting was seeing the smiles and laughs from our Ukrainian team, even during this devastating period for them. Their resilience and strength over the last few weeks has been beyond admirable, and the spirit of the Ukrainian people continues to stun the whole world. On our 30+ person team call, the conversations drifted from what podcasts our team members were listening to to stay calm during air raid sirens, to what kind of initiatives our platform could take on to play our part and help those in need.

Stories of separations and evacuations were told that brought pensive silences to our team, and multilingual jokes were shared that broke those silences with collective laughter. Since the war broke out, our company chat has been pinging with regular updates from team members, which has brought us all closer. One of our team members currently in Ukraine said during the call: “It warms my heart to receive your messages, even from our former colleagues, this really shows how strong we are as a team. … The support we have from the whole world, and the whole myOnvent team – a lot of people are dying, but to receive this support is just so heartwarming.”

Words from Ukraine
After our Team Meeting, we sat down with three of our colleagues, Karina, Alina, and Den, to hear their stories, explore their hopes, and listen to their fears. These are their words.

Karina:

In this reality, you can’t take a shower for more than a few minutes because otherwise you could miss the horrible sirens.

Read Karina’s full story here.

Alina:

We spent a day and a half in the underground parking because of constant air attack alarms. I felt like my life had stopped. All that I’ve been building for the last 30 years.

Read Alina’s full story here.

Den:

This is Kharkiv, Ukraine’s best city to live in the 2021 rankings … a city that now is almost not existing because of constant shooting and bombing.

Read Den’s full story here.

Vitalii:

As I wrote this article, I had to go to a bomb shelter twice in a single day. That’s the reality the whole Ukraine of faces now.

Read Vitalii’s full story here.