November 11th 2022 was the day of great joy - it is the Polish Independence Day and Kherson was liberated from the Russian occupation. Watermelon, the symbol of Kherson, became also a symbol of Ukrainian freedom and joy it brings.

Here at udoWODnij we have spent the last few months thinking of the best way of helping Ukraine and the Ukrainian people with the skills we have - designing cool stuff, selling it to cool people and then helping Ukraine with the money we get. We decided to offer our customers a way to help while shopping with us. After all we already had been involved privately in helping Ukraine - we have donated money, we have fundraised, we have driven our company van to the border and back in March and April 2022 to help Ukrainian refugees.

One of our best and favorite products is our technical balaclava. We designed it to work great for our athletes - we work with skiers, cyclists, mountaineers - people who do sports that require wearing helmets. All the great qualities of this products can also help Ukrainian soldiers and civilians stay warm on the front lines and during electricity and heating blackouts. We knew the 2022/23 winter would be the deciding point of Ukrainian fight for freedom against the Russian invasion.

We wanted to make it possible for our customers to finance production of items that we can send to our Ukrainian friends. We could also reach a much wider group of people through the communities we are in and therefore boost the scale of help - one of these communities is North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) that reacted to the idea with excitement and support.

We wanted, however, to make it possible for our customers to help Ukraine with even the smallest purchases in our shop. We were looking for a quantifiable way of letting you know how your money spent with us translates to help for Ukraine. We decided to alter our loyalty program and change it's points into Watermelon Points - the symbol of Kherson and Ukrainian liberty. The Watermelon Program lets you gather points that will be exchanged to products we ship to Ukraine. As the program is basically a "one balaclava donated for one balaclava sold" model, we let you finance the donations also with products that are cheaper. While one balaclava purchase earns 10 watermelons, smaller product purchases earn smaller numbers of points.

After you pay for the products you want, you will gather Watermelon Points - they will be awarded for every 1/10th of balaclava's value and stored on your customer account (you have to register with us). After that you can spend these points on gifts for our Ukrainian friends using this link (while logged in). As expected, the deal is very simple - you exchange 10 Watermelon Points for 1 balaclava. In the future we might offer more products that will help Ukraine - let's see where this journey leads us!

For those of you that like bullet points - a simplified manual:

• shop with us and gather Watermelon Points with your purchases so we can make balaclavas for Ukrainians
• in the first campaign of the Watermelon Program we want to make 500 balaclavas - 350 polyester ones and 150 made of fire resistant Nomex (these are 2x as expensive but will protect the soldiers agains bursts of fire) - that means we want to ask you to harvest 6500 watermelons!
• check your Watermelon Points balance here
• spend your Watermelon Points on products that help Ukraine here

Current Watermelon Program progress (as of 05/18/23):

 

5463 🍉 / 6500 🍉

 

We deliver our balaclavas to Ukraine with the priceless help from the great people that Renegade Relief Runners are.

        

During the program we shipped 500 products:

• Shipment on 12/15/2022:
  • 133 polyester balaclavas for kids and
  • 100 polyester balaclavas for AFU servicepeople 

• Shipment on 16/02/2023:
  • 150 Nomex balaclavas for AFU servicepeople
  • 50 polyester balaclavas for AFU servicepeople
  • 57 neck warmers for Ukrainian volunteers
  • 10 neck warmers for Ukrainian kids   

Our Watermelon Program harvest in one collage: 

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, your help will make the world truly better.