Mission 2017, or How Internews Ukraine is changing history

Did you have dreams about space when you were a child? Travelling to distant planets, seeing the stars, experiencing zero gravity? We’re still dreaming about this. And while Elon Musk is testing the missile launch for future travels to Mars, we’re fulfilling childhood wishes. We invite you to join our space travel.

Internews Ukraine connected. Let’s look together at what our Mission 2017 was like We can see the #VoiceofWar – a collection containing history. It contains 29 real stories of Ukrainians who fought in Donbas. The book was preceded by the first Ukrainian School of Writing for ATO veterans. The project, which was conceived as literature studies for rehabilitation of soldiers brought together more than two dozen talented authors, and inspired them to continue writing – to create three new collections. Internews Ukraine demonstrated something that the media were unwilling to cover. In the 2017 video archive, we find a documentary called The Limits of Waiting, about Ukrainian prisoners of war and missing persons, about their families, and the fight to return their relatives home. Internews Ukraine connected these faraway planets when it was telling foreigners about Ukraine, when it called on the uniting of international efforts to counter Russian propaganda. The book, Words and Wars: Ukraine Fighting Kremlin Propaganda, explains how disinformation works, and helps to uncover the work of those resources that manipulate public opinion. In late 2017, Europeans were the first to see the book at the Council of Europe. Furthermore, there was a group, UkraineWorld – an international network of experts and journalists which writes about real Ukraine for readers abroad. Articles written by the group were published by such worldwide recognized media and analytical platforms as Financial Times, Le Monde, Atlantic Council, Newsweek Europe, and EurActiv. In 2017, a lot was written about reforms – on billboards, TV news, and in social media. Thanks to Internews Ukraine, health care and energy sector reforms were discussed in understandable lively videos in an unofficial language by well-known cartoon characters, Cossacks. Details about 17 Ukrainian reforms were described in the Reforms Guide. This is a publication, which combined the analysis of experts of key national transformations for the first time in one book. We presented the history, prospects, and challenges of reforms in the form of a tourist guide. The team at Internews Ukraine consists of over fifty professionals who in 2017 organized two hundred events, brought together more than ten thousand people in Ukraine and in five Eastern Partnership countries. We provided 360 media grants, and videos from Internews Ukraine were watched on Facebook and YouTube more than half a million times. Our trip is coming to an end here. As some projects end, new projects begin. The distant future is not so distant, and it is only we who decide what the world will be like tomorrow.