Everyone can help: how Pingle Studio employees volunteer in Ukraine
It’s easier to launch Cyberpunk 2077 on Nintendo Switch than to find a Ukrainian who doesn’t contribute to the goal of Ukraine’s victory in the war against Russia.
Everybody doesn’t need to join the army (but more than 10 people from Pingle Studios already did) to help our country win this war. There are plenty of opportunities for everybody to do their part. Here are some stories by Pingle Studio employees that cover our volunteer experience.
Volunteer location where women sew the camouflage nets, photo by Oleksii Sulakov, Tech Artist at Pingle Studio
Blood donations
Thousands of people from all over Ukraine, including dozens of Pinglers, volunteered to donate their blood in the first days of a full-scale war. The lines to blood donation centers sometimes were kilometers long. People from Pingle Studio donated liters of blood of all types. In fact, not everyone who volunteered managed to donate blood because the storages were full. Bogdan Malynka, our 3D Animator from Dnipro, spent a few hours in line, but the storage for his blood type was full long before it was his turn.
The queue to the blood donation center in Dnipro, photo by Bohdan Malynka, 3D Animator at Pingle Studio
Armor manufacture
Nikita Salnikov, QA specialist at the Dnipro team, and some Pingle Studio employees, who decided to remain anonymous, actively supply Ukrainian Armed Forces and Territorial Defense forces with body armor. Hundreds of thousands of people volunteered to join the army, and governmental facilities weren’t ready to supply everyone with armor. Waiting for the armor from the government was too risky, so people decided to find another solution. Nikita and other Pinglers found people who can sew molle systems, cartridge bags, and the source metal to produce armored plates.
At the moment of this article’s release, people from Pingle Studio managed to provide at least 60 Ukrainian soldiers with full-body armors (including our colleagues who volunteered for the army) and 70+ soldiers with missing parts for body armors.
Parts of body armor suits for the army. Photo by Nikita Salnikov, QA specialist at Pingle Studio.
Translations assistance
Tymur Solod, Content Manager at Pingle Studio, got a message from his friend, telling him that the delegation from Solidarites International is coming to Dnipro and they need an English-speaking person to assist them with verbal translation.
Solidarités International is a non-profit organization working in areas of conflict and natural disasters. They started their mission in Ukraine in March and already helped people in Lviv, Uman, Mykolaiv, and Dnipro with emergency needs.
Tymur translated for them during meetings with local authorities, volunteers, charity organizations, and IDPs. Tymur helps them with translation and some management to this day. The organization decided to create a headquarters for its Ukrainian mission in Dnipro.
Tymur Solod, Content Manager at Pingle Studio, translates for Philippe Bonnet from Solidarites International and Anna Bratkova from Dnipro city municipality at the humanitarian aid distribution center in Dnipro. Photo by Solidarites international.
Various volunteering assistance
Oleksii Shulakov, Tech Artist at the Kyiv office, along with many other Pinglers who decided to stay anonymous, shared his experience as a volunteer. They helped with sorting food and other goods for IDP shelters in Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, and many other Ukrainian cities. They also helped with building block posts from Ukrainian Armed Forces in these regions. Among more specific stuff, our Game Designer, who decided to stay anonymous, helped find Ukrainian-speaking mental health experts to help Ukrainian refugees in Poland.
Car with goods for Ukrainians in hot points. Photo by Oleksii Sulakov, Tech Artist at Pingle Studio
Translations for the army
A person from Pingle Studio, who decided to stay anonymous, found a request from an army unit to translate NATO military intelligence instruction. He contacted the unit and received a 197 pages long military document that had to be translated from English to Ukrainian. It was way too much volume for one person, so he made a call for English-speaking Ukrainians on social media. In less than a day, the team of 30+ volunteers (including more people from Pingle Studio) started working on the document. The Army unit had the paper in Ukrainian in a few days. Now Ukraine Armed Forces use this document for intelligence training.
Donations and hostility
Pinglers helped collect money for various needs, from food and meds to rare and expensive military equipment. For example, Stanyslav Prystavka, business development manager at Pingle Studio, organized funding for night vision devices for his friend’s battalion. People from Pingle Studio take part in funding army and territorial requirements regularly.
Many people from various Ukrainian cities come to Dnipro and need shelter. Another quite popular way for Pinglers to help is hosting IDPs. Multiple Pingle Studio Dnipro employees provided their place for colleagues from Kharkiv and Kyiv and people outside Pingle Studio.
“It brings us closer than any team-building activityю” — stated Pingle Studio employees, who host colleagues from Kharkiv in Dnipro.
Conclusion
Joining the army is a great thing to do, but it’s not the only way you can help Ukraine win this war. Most of us can do more with a computer than with a gun. Even working for Pingle Studio helps restore Ukraine’s economy, especially since we refused the government’s offer to pay lower taxes.
We all do what we do best.
We wish peace and prosperity to everyone.
Oleksii Shulakov and his dog, hiding in the bomb shelter during the shelling in Kyiv.
