PRESS RELEASE (English)

“Pioneers for Ukraine”: Gabor Steingart’s Pioneer Foundation launches sponsorships for Ukrainian journalists / Charity work featuring artworks by Mia Florentine Weiss to generate additional income

Berlin – 28 March 2022. The Pioneer Foundation founded by journalist Gabor Steingart is now supporting journalists, bloggers and media professionals from Ukraine who are in danger or have fled the country. Dedicated to citizen journalism, the non-profit foundation has launched the “Pioneers for Ukraine” campaign to deliver swift and unbureaucratic support in Ukraine and Germany. 

The Pioneer Foundation’s first sponsorship will support the editorial team of Ukrayinska Pravda in Kiev, which is headed by editor-in-chief Sevğil Musayeva. The sponsorship includes a direct grant towards the platform’s production budget and the expansion of its English-language website, pravda.com.ua/eng. The aim is to keep on-location journalism alive, its financial basis having largely collapsed. Around 70 journalists currently work for the editorial team of Ukrayinska Pravda. 

“Pioneers for Ukraine” also sponsors Ukrainian journalists who have fled to Germany, providing them with things like legal assistance, insurance cover, help making contacts and training. Editorial teams in need, as well as individual journalists, can now apply online by providing a brief profile at www.pioneer-foundation.de/ukraine. Information in writing and video form, as well as people to get in touch with are available there in three languages (German, English, Ukrainian). 

Money is already available from the campaign through donations, and more will come from a charity auction featuring works by artist Mia Florentine Weiss, whose Love/Hate sculptures are exhibited worldwide. Beginning on 31 March, a three metre high, six metre wide illuminated installation made of steel and glass, which alternately displays the words NEW / NOW, will be auctioned. This installation includes thousands of “messages in a bottle” containing citizens’ political wishes which were collected in autumn 2021 as part of the news portal The Pioneer’s journalistic “Germany Expedition”. During the auction, three limited edition miniature sculptures belonging to the well-known Love/Hate series in the Ukrainian national colours will also be auctioned off. The auction will be online at eBay for Charity and can be entered using this link: https://www.ebay.de/usr/pioneer_foundation.

The artwork will be activated at an event on board the media ship The Pioneer One in the presence of the artist on the evening of 31 March. It will be available for the public to see in Berlin at the Schiffbauerdamm 12 jetty opposite the Federal Press Office and Friedrichstraße S-Bahn station until 10 April. 

Gabor Steingart, founder of the Pioneer Foundation: “You can only defend freedom of expression by exercising it – and that is all the more so today. By launching its ‘Pioneers for Ukraine’ campaign and auctioning Mia Florentine’s art, the Pioneer Foundation hopes to help ensure that the voices of journalists from Ukraine are never silenced.”

Mia Florentine Weiss: “This war is a turning point. Transforming thousands of citizens’ wishes into an active readymade for political Berlin to highlight freedom of expression in the midst of the government quarter is so much more important now, given current events.“

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Contact:

Toni Willkommen
Managing Director of Pioneer Foundation gGmbH
Tel.: +49 172 9019464
t.willkommen@pioneer-foundation.de
www.pioneer-foundation.de

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