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good works
Jul. 13th, 2022 07:28 amOn Monday, the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov, "said ... his investment company would exit its vast media business to conform with a law designed to curb the influence of 'oligarchs,' a move cheered by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office" (quoting this Reuters story). This involved turning over Media Group Ukraine's print and television licenses and stopping all online media.
"All online media" includes the volunteer effort I've been part of since March, proofreading translated Ukrainian tweets, Facebook posts, and TikTok videos. All of a sudden, about 12 hours before I was going to do one of my 3–5 am shifts, the program stopped. Just like that.
I've been so intensely grateful for the opportunity to use my skills, such as they are, for a good cause. Isn't it what we're always craving, when we hear of something that we want to help with--to be able to actually *work*? So often it feels like the only way to be helpful is to give money (not knocking that! Money is tremendously useful! But there are limits to what most of us can do along those lines, and it's not very personally involving) or else to do rote work of some sort, like phone banking. (I'm not knocking that either; it's just something that I happen to dislike.) It was a very disorienting surprise to have the Ukrainian project suddenly disappear.
I always wondered, when I was doing my proofreading, how the output was affecting public opinion, if at all. The tweets and videos and posts encompassed both stories/headlines you could find from mainstream US news sources and human-interest stories from the daily lives of ordinary Ukrainians--inspiring, enraging, and heartbreaking/heartwarming by turns. I liked the ones about brave dogs and intrepid cats. Here is a sample tweet: a girl raising money with a little market stand, and here is a thread I was the proofer for.
Regardless of what effect the effort was having on the world scale, I feel like it had a big effect on a personal scale. The team of proofreaders, translators, and editors really became friends. A friend who also was involved as a proofreader wrote this in a blog post:
We're still connected by a group chat. One of the Ukrainian editors is involved in an effort for refugees, and some of the Americans who have experience with aid work are offering suggestions for contacts. We'll see where things go from here.
"All online media" includes the volunteer effort I've been part of since March, proofreading translated Ukrainian tweets, Facebook posts, and TikTok videos. All of a sudden, about 12 hours before I was going to do one of my 3–5 am shifts, the program stopped. Just like that.
I've been so intensely grateful for the opportunity to use my skills, such as they are, for a good cause. Isn't it what we're always craving, when we hear of something that we want to help with--to be able to actually *work*? So often it feels like the only way to be helpful is to give money (not knocking that! Money is tremendously useful! But there are limits to what most of us can do along those lines, and it's not very personally involving) or else to do rote work of some sort, like phone banking. (I'm not knocking that either; it's just something that I happen to dislike.) It was a very disorienting surprise to have the Ukrainian project suddenly disappear.
I always wondered, when I was doing my proofreading, how the output was affecting public opinion, if at all. The tweets and videos and posts encompassed both stories/headlines you could find from mainstream US news sources and human-interest stories from the daily lives of ordinary Ukrainians--inspiring, enraging, and heartbreaking/heartwarming by turns. I liked the ones about brave dogs and intrepid cats. Here is a sample tweet: a girl raising money with a little market stand, and here is a thread I was the proofer for.
Regardless of what effect the effort was having on the world scale, I feel like it had a big effect on a personal scale. The team of proofreaders, translators, and editors really became friends. A friend who also was involved as a proofreader wrote this in a blog post:
I think it’s safe to say, that grateful as we are to have been part of the collaboration, it also meant something special to our Ukrainian partners running to bomb shelters that strangers across the world were donating hours of their time, expecting nothing in return — just wanting to say, “You are not alone.”
We're still connected by a group chat. One of the Ukrainian editors is involved in an effort for refugees, and some of the Americans who have experience with aid work are offering suggestions for contacts. We'll see where things go from here.
