On February 1, 2001, several people gathered inside the then Lviv Theological Academy and held the first meeting, at which it was decided that the newly formed information agency would be called the Religious Information Service of Ukraine.
Dear and beloved readers!
Friends!
On February 1, 2001, several people gathered inside the then Lviv Theological Academy and held the first meeting, at which it was decided that the newly formed information agency would be called the Religious Information Service of Ukraine.
The name was ambitious, but intentions and plans were also great. In a couple of months on the World Wide Web, then quite different from what we have now, much tighter and smaller, the site risu.org.ua appeared, aiming to talk about the rich but rather confusing, life of Ukrainian religious communities - history, modernity, challenges and victories. .At first, RISU filled the English-speaking niche, a Ukrainian version appeared later, and then we realized that our information should also be distributed in Russian.
We grew up, the Internet grew and changed. In 2009, we changed our portal to make it more convenient for readers and respond to their (your) requests and needs. We were glad to increase the number of readers, correspondents, experts, topics. Together with you, the difficult moments were lived through: the Revolution of Dignity, when our site was repeatedly subjected to hacker attacks, and Russian aggression against our country. Trying to be objective, we have never concealed that the fate of Ukraine, its Churches and religious organizations is our primary concern. We sincerely care for the religious peace and want to be the platform for discussions and dialogue between different parties of the religious life of Ukraine. We hope that at least partly fulfill this mission.
17 years is a lot for an electronic media resource in the world where the media are born, die or are resurrected almost daily. Thank you for your trust. We are grateful to those who have been with us from the beginning, and those who have joined just recently. We thank you for future readers who we do not know yet. We value your attention and always try to remember that we work for you so that it would be interesting and useful for you to read RISU.
In order to comply with your interests, we must improve. Now we are faced with the challenge of technical upgrading of the portal, since over the past eight years the Internet has changed a lot and we feel that the RISU hub fails to catch up with the changes. You may have noticed that the mailing has disappeared, you cannot log in via social networks, some audio-visual functionality is out of date, the portal archive by 2009 is unavailable. For us, the administrators, the weakness of the website is even more perceptible.
Therefore, 2018 should be the year to update the portal. We will change the design, the functional part, the content and the way material is presented. However, we are also willing to do that in terms of your wishes. Because your convenience is our first priority.
And now, there is a thing we would like to ask you.
RISU is structurally a part of the Ukrainian Catholic University, but we honestly admit that we enjoy full editorial and journalistic freedom.
If you do not believe, ask the rector or President of UCU, who sometimes gets theirs because of our independence and courage. However, this model also implies financial independence.
From its very founding, RISU has existed and developed due to grants and donations. None of the Churches or Religious Organizations Fund our Activities!
Now our main grantor is the National Endowment for Democracy, which for many years has provided our basic funding, for which we are very grateful. Therefore, we need your support to upgrade the website.
The total amount for upgrading the website is about 7,000 USD. We have invested the first portion of $ 500 in a savings account from the project. The rest is to be collected.
How can you help?
1. Read us. Your interest is the best moral support.
2. Support us with "likes" and "shares". They have a value of gold in the world of social media. If you have not already liked our page, please do so now https://www.facebook.com/risu.ukr/
3. Tell about us to your friends, colleagues and acquaintances.
4. Pray - in your language and tradition
5. Become our volunteers, new authors, as well as help translate into Russian and English, etc.
6. Support us with a powerful donation. The experience of different media shows that the process of fundraising is not simple, it requires a lot of effort from the team and readers, but we believe in you and ourselves. You are many thousands and therefore one dollar or 20-30 UAH (a price of coffee) from everyone of you, and RISU can get a new website. It is simple, isn’t it?
You can find here the accounts and ways to credit funds.
PrivatBank card number:
5168 7422 1321 3110 - UAH
5168 7422 1321 3188 - USD
Thank you for having stayed and staying with us!
Sincerely yours,
Religious Information Service of Ukraine