THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
Today marks 1,000 days since the russian occupiers launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. In order to support media workers and provide them with assistance, for the sake of solidarity of the journalistic community, at the initiative of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the russian occupiers into the territory of Ukraine, NUJU Journalists’ Solidarity Centers (JSC) have been created and operating in the regions of the country. One of the first was opened in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk on April 8, 2022.
More details about the work of the Center can be found in an interview with its coordinator, Honored Journalist of Ukraine Viktoriya Plakhta.
Ivano-Frankivsk JSC, like other Centers, also takes care of regions in which there are no such journalistic centers. Our sponsors are Volyn, Rivne, Chernihiv, and the Kherson Regions.
The main mission of the Centers is to provide comprehensive assistance to journalists in the profession, IDP media workers, and in every way, to assist our foreign colleagues who cover the events of the war in Ukraine.
In the context of comprehensive assistance, I want to be more specific. We are talking about organizational – on various professional and everyday issues; technical – we provide work in the Center‘s co-working space, in particular, colleagues most often need this kind of assistance during blackouts; legal – with the support of UNESCO, free legal assistance for media workers operates and, if necessary, they can contact both through the JSCs and directly to the legal assistance hotline for journalists; psychological – we involve specialists to conduct consultations, training sessions on providing psychological support.
The Center also has protective equipment – bulletproof vests, helmets, and equipped first aid kits, which it can provide for free use to colleagues for business trips to the combat zone or front-line territories.
We also periodically provide charitable humanitarian aid in the form of electronic gadgets and technical equipment, food kits, medicines, household chemicals, etc. First of all, we are talking about assistance to IDP media workers and journalists whose relatives are currently fighting at the front.
Even before the opening of the Center, more than 30 sets of protective equipment and dozens of items of video and audio equipment were sent to film crews from central TV channels and southern and eastern regions; local TV channels also received some of them. In parallel, we were engaged in arranging and preparing the office of the JSC for work.
You correctly noted that the journalistic community had no experience of such work before. The war has become a serious and difficult challenge for all of Ukraine, in general, and for media workers in particular.
But, despite everything, our Ivano-Frankivsk JSC has been working fruitfully for the third year in a row, providing every possible assistance to Carpathian media workers, those in the profession, and colleagues-IDPs who temporarily settled in our region, and there are over 50 of them. We also contact colleagues from sponsored regions, study their needs, and provide the necessary assistance.
We also maintain close contact with displaced students of specialized departments of the Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University and King Danylo University. If necessary, we help them solve problematic issues. Currently, more than 15 students from among IDPs are studying in higher education institutions in Ivano-Frankivsk.
For example, the editor of Ukrainian Radio Kharkiv, Roman Kryvko, who temporarily lived in Ivano-Frankivsk after the full-scale invasion, worked at the Center every day for more than six months: here, he recorded news and interviews from the Kharkiv Region for his media, processed materials and from there sent them to the editorial office of the Kharkiv media.
In particular, the international project called Working Together for Victory. Within the framework of its program, together with the Information Department of the Ivano-Frankivsk Archdiocese of the UGCC, the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital, and, thanks to the help and support of volunteers from the Italian association Anteas Alessandria, the UGCC communities of the cities of Turin and Ancona sent five seriously ill children from Ukraine to Italian clinics for treatment during 2023-2024.
In addition, together with the Carpathian media workers who head charitable and public organizations, we provide humanitarian assistance to IDP journalists and colleagues from sponsored regions. Among our partners are the Charity Fund “Pure Hearts,” headed by NUJU member Iryna Rabarska, the Humanitarian Center Community of Sant’Egidio, headed by Ivan Kharuk, and the Ivano-Frankivsk Chamber of Commerce and Industry. I am sincerely grateful to all our partners for their fruitful cooperation. Goodness, peace, and victory!
Call the Ivano-Frankivsk JSC at 066 677 0726 (Viktoriya Plakhta, the coordinator of the Ivano-Frankivsk Center). The Center’s address is 25 Sichovykh Striltsiv Street.
About JSC
The Journalists’ Solidarity Centers are an initiative of the NUJU implemented with the support of the International and European Federations of Journalists, as well as UNESCO. The initiative is designed to help media representatives working in Ukraine during the war. The JSCs operate in Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipro and provide journalists with organizational, technical, legal, psychological, and other types of assistance.
About UNESCO
UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It contributes to peace and security by promoting international cooperation in education, sciences, culture, communication, and information. UNESCO promotes knowledge sharing and the free flow of ideas to accelerate mutual understanding. It is the coordinator of the UN Action Plan on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, which aims to create a free and safe environment for journalists and media workers, thus strengthening peace, democracy, and sustainable development worldwide. UNESCO is working closely with its partner organizations in Ukraine to provide support to journalists on the ground.
The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this digest do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city, or area or its authorities or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this digest and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.
Interview by Dana Danyliv
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