Symbols matter. So does being able to start a business, run an organisation, ship a product and keep growing it. UAFest helps Ukrainian ideas become visible, useful and strong on their own feet.
Every year this festival is built by people who can do things — developers, designers, marketers, people who run businesses. For one Sunday in September that skill goes into a stage and a market row, and then everyone goes home.
UAFest Labs is what happens with it the other three hundred and sixty-four days. A Ukrainian bakery in Ottawa that takes orders through Instagram messages. A volunteer organisation in Lviv keeping its donors in a spreadsheet. A museum in Chernihiv oblast with no website at all. Somebody in Vancouver with an idea and no idea where to start.
We are not raising money for this. We are asking people to give what they actually have: an evening a week, one website, an hour of advice on how to price something.
The goal is not to make anyone dependent on UAFest. It is to help Ukrainian ideas look, work and travel at the scale they deserve — then stay close enough to help with the next brave step.
Not only software. We can help turn a Ukrainian idea into something people can find, use, buy, share and keep growing.
A public home
A landing page, Family profile, directory, marketplace or campaign site — with a clear story, search-ready structure, real calls to action and accounts you own.
Story · search · content · enquiries
Handmade work, a clear story and one place to see the collection or start a conversation.
Contact the makerA working tool
Forms, bookings, CRM, member portals, AI-assisted workflows and bots can turn a repeated manual process into a tool the team can actually run.
Requests · bookings · follow-up · handover
A product people can hold
A product concept, visual identity, packaging direction, supplier-ready artwork, product page and launch campaign — the pieces that let a maker move from craft table to recognisable brand.
Concept · identity · production files · launch
After launch
You keep the code, accounts and know-how. Your project stays connected to the UAFest Family, with a year-round door open for check-ins, shared problem-solving and the next clearly scoped build.
Launch · learn · improve · return
Anyone with something worth building
A cultural, social, community, educational or commercial project. You do not need a business plan or a technical background — you need to be able to say what it is for and who it helps.
Bring the idea →Ukrainian businesses, NGOs, community and cultural organisations
You need a website, a Telegram bot, a CRM, a booking system, automation or an AI assistant, and there is no budget for it right now. Tell us what is in the way.
Ask for help →Developers, designers, AI, marketing, SEO, product, QA, writers
Give expertise instead of money. Three hours a week, one website, a single consultation on UX — all of it counts, and saying which one you mean is more useful than saying yes to everything.
Offer your skills →Companies, sponsors, donors, cloud and tool providers
Fund a project, cover the infrastructure a build needs, or open a door. Support here is named on the thing it made possible, not on a banner.
Support a build →One form, five minutes. It reaches a person, not a queue.
We select the projects where this team and these volunteers can make the most real difference. Not everything gets built, and we say no clearly rather than slowly.
Community and non-profit work is built for a public thank-you to UAFest and the volunteers who did it. A commercial project is built as a partnership with a share in it. Which one applies is agreed with you before anything starts.
With a named person on our side and a named person on yours, and a date.
You own the result and learn how to run it. The project stays connected to the UAFest Family, so a check-in or a clearly scoped next build does not start from zero.
It is not free work for everyone who asks. We are volunteers with a festival to run, and taking on more than we can finish would leave people worse off than we found them.
It is not an agency. There is no support contract, no guaranteed timeline, and no obligation to take a project on.
It is not charity in one direction. Pro bono work is exchanged for a public thank-you, and commercial projects are built as partnerships. We would rather write that here than discover it together in the fourth email.
We work in small cohorts, not a queue. The first one opens after the festival, on 1 October 2026, and takes five projects. Applications sent before then are read and answered — they simply wait for that date.
You own your accounts. Domain, hosting, database and any paid services are in your name from the first day, and we help you pick the cheapest thing that works. Nothing you rely on ends up living inside our account.
We do not build assistants that answer questions about immigration, legal status, benefits, health, money or safety. Those answers have consequences when they are wrong, and a volunteer project is the wrong place to give them.
After delivery you get the code, accounts, a written handover and thirty days for close support. After that, you stay in the UAFest Family and can return for shared problem-solving or a clearly scoped next step. That is year-round community support, not an unlimited private IT department.
