Echoes from Ukraine

Charles Tiné is a French tech entrepreneur who co-launched The Small Projects Team, an NGO that fills urgent gaps : sending wood-burning stoves to shelters, helping amputee football clubs, and above all, supporting local actors with fast, adaptive solutions in wartime Ukraine.

From Paris to the Border: A War That Wouldn’t Let Go

When Russian troops invaded Ukraine in late February 2022, Charles Tiné was in Paris visiting his children. He was scheduled to return to Montréal ten days later but decided instead to make use of that time by heading to the Polish-Ukrainian border to help. He flew to Kraków, took a train to Przemyśl, and then hitchhiked to Medyka, a small village on the frontier.

There, he joined the initial setup of the humanitarian corridor at the border crossing. After three sleepless days, he moved to Przemyśl, five kilometers away, where an abandoned Tesco supermarket was transforming into a transit center for refugees. Volunteers from across Europe, and as far as Australia, had set up folding tables marked by national flags. Charles grabbed a roll of packing paper, wrote “France Desk” in thick marker, and got to work : guiding families to buses, printing train timetables, explaining visa procedures, and more.

After more than two months on the ground, Charles returned to Canada exhausted, but energized. Alongside other volunteers, he began asking how they could continue supporting Ukraine from abroad. About six weeks later, he attempted to open an information center in Lviv. The plan was to use the mezzanine of the city’s main train station café—but following the Kramatorsk station bombing in April 2022, the location was deemed too dangerous. The project was shelved. But the mission remained.

Launching The Small Projects Team

Back in France, Charles joined forces with Magda, a Polish volunteer living in France who had also been involved since the first days of the invasion. Together, they founded The Small Projects Team in September 2022.

Its model is simple: target urgent, under-addressed needs and act fast. The organization has delivered wood-burning stoves fabricated in Ukraine, set up study rooms for displaced children, and organized performances by artists like French clown JyJou to bring joy to children living in temporary shelters.

The Spark Behind UAmpFoot

In 2023, during a coffee meeting in Lviv, a friend working at City Hall asked Charles if he knew anything about amputee football. He didn’t, but she took him to see the first team training at the Don Bosco Foundation. That visit planted the seed for something bigger.

Lviv is home to Ukraine’s two most important rehabilitation centers : Unbroken and Superhumans and it was clear that structured, inclusive activities could help amputees move from treatment to reintegration.

The Small Projects Team developed a grant program to support new teams getting off the ground. It started in Odesa and has since grown through word of mouth. The newest club is currently forming in Dnipro. Each receives a €5,000 grant to cover essentials like kits, pitch rentals, and coaching.

Building a National Network

Today, eight clubs train regularly across Ukraine: Pokrova Lviv, Shakhtar Steel, Dnipro Cherkasy, Octopus Odesa, Khrestonostsi Lutsk, and others, with additional teams supported by partner NGOs like Hope For Ukraine.

The League of the Mighty, Ukraine’s first amputee football championship, was created by the Ukrainian Association of Football (UAF). The league provides not only competition but also a national framework for amputees to regain identity, discipline, and purpose.

According to the Superhumans Center, around 150,000 people in Ukraine live with limb amputations.

How to Help

Building a sustainable network of 25 clubs will require roughly €500,000 in total support. Charles is actively seeking donors and sponsors—not to fund everything, but to ignite more sparks.

The Small Projects Team remains involved in other humanitarian efforts: distributing laptops, setting up study rooms in Cherkasy, and offering creative interventions for children displaced by war.

Every donation matters. A small gift can fund a month of training. A larger one can launch a club. The organization also accepts gear, sports-adapted crutches, prosthetic parts, and laptops.

To learn more or support the initiative, visit: https://thesmallprojects.org