The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a catastrophic humanitarian crisis with lives being lost and thrown into turmoil, properties and infrastructures destroyed, and millions of livelihoods being threatened every day. A new initiative, called “Print Against War”, is calling upon printers and converters, publishers, influencers, and suppliers to the printing and packaging industry to join forces to support their colleagues during this difficult time. Beyond the war in Ukraine, the organization’s goals extend to an ongoing ability to help restore the socioeconomic fabric of printing in any region affected by war.

Print Against War is a nonprofit initiative of the Meaningful Print Foundation, will help Ukrainian printing and packaging companies continue to operate, or provide support when they can again start up their productions. Together, Print Against War and the Meaningful Print Foundation are designed to mobilize the global printing and packaging industry to help stakeholders cope with wars, natural disasters, epidemics/pandemics, and other damaging and disruptive occurrences. In addition, the Meaningful Print Foundation will work on long-term projects empowering the printing industry to make a positive impact on the planet by addressing gender equality, carbon neutralization, sustainable manufacturing, education for students in need, and inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce.

The program is open to offers of help from vendors, printers, and any other printing community members. To encourage the collection of donations from a broad base of users, Print Against War proposes that online printing and packaging businesses add a voluntary checkout donation option to their e-shops. This will allow a broad base of designers, agencies, print-service providers and individuals around the world to contribute. In addition, you can make direct donations or offer other forms of material help (e.g., provide consumables, paper, etc., for free or at special prices). Finally, Print Against War is working to create alliances between printers in the European Union and those in Ukraine so that the former can share jobs with the latter, making their survival possible.

The Meaningful Print Foundation is setting up an application system to make resource allocation transparent. Through its supervisory board, it will evaluate case by case the eligibility of the applicant and the goodness of the projects to be supported. All funded projects will be made visible.

Within the initiative and on the website, Print Against War intends to make visible reports from the field, give voice to Ukrainian printers through written and video interviews, and collect messages of solidarity from personalities, print champions, and print enthusiasts.

Marcus Timson, co-founder of Future Print, comments, “We encourage anyone in the printing sector, anywhere in the world, to help our brothers and sisters in Ukraine rebuild their businesses and get behind this fantastic initiative.”

Alon Bar-Shany, chairman of Highcon and former general manager of HP Indigo, says, “Because in the end, the war ends. And life comes back. As a print industry, I think we want to help our colleagues.”

The organization has also asked duomedia, a PR agency serving the print and packaging industries, to help increase its visibility and gain additional support.

“Beyond the humanitarian efforts that individuals, families, and businesses are making to support the Ukrainian population and refugees, we believe that an industry-wide response is essential,” says Lorenzo Villa, co-founder of the Meaningful Print Foundation. “Print Against War is the first global outreach and support project to a regional printing and packaging market in need. We count it as just the first that the Meaningful Print Foundation will be able to coordinate in the future.”