At the very beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, ECOM created a chatbot to help LGBT Ukrainians and their loved ones, which can be found on Telegram under the name @ecomwork_bot. A team of psychologists was formed to provide psychological and information assistance. However, throughout the war, other requests began to come in as well, and ECOM could not leave them unnoticed.
That is why ECOM decided to expand the chatbot features and added three new ones. So, now, in addition to psychological and information assistance, you can get:
  1. peer-to-peer consultation;
  2. doctor’s consultation;
  3. legal advice.
You can use the new features of the updated chatbot starting from July 11.
Elena German, ECOM Capacity Building Coordinator, has been coordinating the work of the bot from day one. It was she who monitored the most popular requests to the bot:

“Since our chatbot was launched, we have already provided more than 300 informational and psychological consultations, and now we see how our clients’ requests are changing. Whereas at first most of the requests were related to psychological conditions — anxiety, powerlessness, fears — over the time, more and more people started paying attention to their physical health, medical needs, and requests for legal assistance began to come in. In response to these requests, we expanded the team and functionality of our chatbot, and now you can get qualified advice from an infectious disease specialist regarding HIV, hepatitis, STIs, COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. There’s also peer-to-peer counseling provided by social workers on safer sexual behavior, testing for HIV and other infections, living with HIV and adherence to ART, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), as well as consultation from a legal expert regarding Ukrainian legislation and that of other countries, HIV, LGBT, protection of rights.
Our team is always happy to help you! Take care of yourself and your loved ones!”

The war continues, and LGBT Ukrainians need help more than ever, especially because of the growing “war fatigue”. We are there for our partners and colleagues, and for everyone who needs help in this difficult time.