About

About the work of the Foundation

The BYSOL Foundation was the response of Belarusian society to the wave of lawlessness and violence that struck our country in August 2020. At that time, we focused on helping people who lost their jobs for political reasons and those who were forced to leave the country.

For 2020, BYSOL paid €2.9 million to support people fired for political reasons, striking workers, and people who were forced to leave Belarus because their freedom and safety were threatened.

In 2021, in addition to the foundation's core activities, we successfully campaigned together with you:

• raised funds to support veterans for May 9th (payments totaled more than 17,000 euros);
• helped children of political prisoners to prepare for school and buy school supplies — more than 100 children received help, amounting to 11,000 euros;
• held a Christmas campaign for families of political prisoners.

In the shortest possible time, the BYSOL team created a money transfer system in Belarus, invulnerable to illegitimate authorities. All attempts at financial interdiction and cyberattacks orchestrated by the regime proved fruitless.

What we are doing now:

Today BYSOL supports initiatives that help repressed and victimized Belarusians. We help medical, sports and cultural solidarity foundations. We support political prisoners and their families, as well as those who have been released and need support. We help people who have been dismissed for political reasons to retrain, so that they can acquire a new profession with the skills they need.

We create and develop relevant fields, responding to the challenges of our time:

• We support active backyard communities to purchase supplies (spray paint cans, flags, sticker making) for backyard communities that are active. We also provide training to ensure their physical and psychological safety.
• We help the families of political prisoners and those who have served time on illegal charges — these people need not only financial but also psychological help.
• With ongoing repression, arrests and prison sentences, we help activists and their families move from Belarus to a safe place and have opened a hotline for advice on leaving — all of this is handled by the evacuation line.
• We open personal collections for people affected by repression, so they can quickly raise the necessary funds. 
• We cooperate with Ukrainian activists and initiatives. We provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and support Belarusian volunteers fighting in the ranks of the Ukrainian army.

All these initiatives unite Belarusians in their struggle for freedom.

Belarusian solidarity is not just words. Since 2020, we stand against lawlessness. We fight for freedom of Belarus and now for freedom of Ukraine.

Work at the Foundation

BYSOL regularly publishes reports on social networks and on the official website: there you can find all receipts and expenditures of funds.
At the moment, the foundation employs civil activists, human rights activists and people who were engaged in other spheres before 2020 — two dozen people in total.

The head of the Fund is the Belarusian human rights activist Andrei Strizhak.

More than 90 thousand people have already become donors of the Fund — people not indifferent from all over the world who help to give birth to a new, free and democratic Belarus.

Directions of Work of the BYSOL Solidarity Fund

The main areas of work of the BYSOL Foundation are:

• Support of courtyard initiatives;
• Financial assistance to political prisoners and their families;
• Assistance to political prisoners who have been released from prison;
• Support for Belarusian volunteers in Ukraine;
• Urgent evacuation of defendants in politically motivated criminal cases to safety;
• Personal fundraisers for victims of repressions.