PR, events and influencer relations to drive donations for displaced Ukrainian children through a tech‑for‑good reading platform.
The partnership
Better Time Stories is a tech‑for‑good initiative founded by Ukrainian entrepreneur Andriy Shmyhelskyy to reconnect refugee children with family members separated by the war. The project combines bilingual picture books written by Ukrainian authors with an app that lets parents and relatives record themselves reading aloud, so children can hear familiar voices at bedtime even when they are thousands of kilometres away.
When the conflict escalated and millions of families were displaced across Europe, Better Time Stories needed to move from a powerful idea to a scaled, cross‑border movement. Shmyhelskyy asked Clarity to build awareness, unlock donations, and turn a grassroots initiative into a structured, multi‑market programme that could sustain support as the crisis evolved.
Reducing fragmentation
Clarity designed a senior‑led, pan‑European strategy to cut through a crowded media agenda and channel fragmented goodwill into one coherent campaign. Clarity convened a pro bono coalition of agencies, NGOs, brands, and high‑profile ambassadors – including Olena Zelenska, Elke Büdenbender, Doris Schmidauer, and Princess Laurentien van Oranje – to give the initiative instant legitimacy and reach.
Two high‑impact launch events in The Hague and Frankfurt anchored a broader earned, influencer, and paid media programme, underpinned by a hero film shot in Kyiv and real‑time performance dashboards. By aligning storytelling, political advocacy, and partner activation across markets, Clarity turned Better Time Stories from a local project into an orchestrated system for ongoing donations and book distribution.
