Perhaps because I was feeling so much pain inside, or maybe because I was masking guilt of living in a peaceful place while my people were suffering, I dove head first into our community’s volunteering efforts to send help to Ukraine. I needed to feel useful and felt like my whole life experience with serving through the church has prepared me for this.
We focused on sending medical and tactical supplies, through the Amazon list that I created.
People were able to send their purchases directly to me through Amazon.
Spreading the need for help through news was very helpful:
And then my home would look like that again for a few days.
Here is another article in the news. Evan, the journalist who came to my house to interview me, grew up in the US but his parents are Ukrainian. So this subject was very close to his heart.
We collected lots and lots of these, and they are not cheap at all.
On one occasion, we collected baby needs as well--that was a great success.
I also worked closely with Razom organization, trying to get dentists and dental suppliers in our area to donate some of their surgical equipment. I must say, we were quite unsuccessful at that... I did manage to collect quite a bit of smaller items like gauze and bleed stop (four huge boxes of it). I also was able to purchase a patient monitor which is quite an expensive item.
In the meantime, I was helping a couple of my friends in Kyiv and Ukraine to collect money for tactical supplies that they were able to order from Europe.
All of this was incredible team effort! The problem is that the need has not disappeared but our enthusiasm to help is waning...
At the moment (6 months later), I am working on collecting uniforms for those fighting at the frontlines. It is amazing how much we can do still! A few of my military friends responded and have been helping with this effort for which I am so grateful!
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