Supporting Ukrainian Refugee Centers
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A small donation can have a big impact
Our trip to Poland started off as a big success. We continued to help families move from the Plaza to new refugee centers. We bought a couple of suitcases to help some people consolidate their small bags. Most people when they fled Ukraine came had very few possessions, but having been in Poland for 3-6 months, had accumulated a decent amount of donations to start over. Unfortunately, it is hard for them to maintain things while living in crowded and temporary shelters.
On Tuesday we had the opportunity to work with a non-denominational church tied to some Pentecostals. They had rented hotel rooms out for people who have some level of handicap that required certain levels of care.
One of the volunteers we were working with was named Michael, he was from Miami, Florida. He had bought eight fans for the Plaza and Marcee had bought ten more to help offset the heat. Somewhere in the move, seven of the fans had been unaccounted for. They likely ended up at one of the refugee centers, but because of the funds friends and family had donated towards, we were able to purchase more and replace them.
We continued our efforts in helping with any work that presented itself. Alen introduced us to a woman named Yulia. She was a single mother of two children who traveled with her to Poland. Unfortunately, she had to leave behind her sister and mother in Ukraine because her mother’s health forced her to be bed-ridden. Alen had provided us with a shopping list and some of the items were to be sent back to Yulia’s sister and mother in hopes of providing additional comfort and care. We purchased 120 items that would assist in hygienic care for her mother. When we returned with the items and shared the haul with Yulia she began crying and gave me a big hug. It was another reminder that the work we were doing, though seemingly simple at times, carried a huge impact on those who we were serving. Every little thing mattered.
Teaching English & washing clothes
Tuesday evening, we returned to Snyadetski, where many of the residents of the Plaza had been relocated to. Snyadetski used to be a hospital / medical school that was abandoned but had nicer grounds for people to get outdoors and for children to play. (? https://nowa.babinski.pl/) It seemed a little more comfortable than the circumstances they were living with at the Plaza.
The government had leveraged Snyadetski’s space to convert it into a temporary refugee center. It offered a little more privacy, with only 8-10 cots per room, albeit they were still packed tightly. It also offered larger common rooms, restrooms, and even a couple of single restrooms. Overall, it offered a few more comforts.
One of the skills we thought might come in handy in various situations was our ability to speak Russian and Ukrainian. We didn’t anticipate teaching English would be a task we would undertake.
On Sunday, we met so many amazing people, and one of the new friends we had made was named Fred. He invited us to join him and assist to teach English to those wishing to learn at Snyadetski. He had brought along his two teenage children, Jake, and Marisol, and were there for a 5–6-week service tour they were doing on their own. Fred’s wife is deaf, and their family were fluent in American sign language as well as Fred taught ASL. They were there to serve, volunteer, and teach English and were actively apart of the work we were participating in.
We continued to meet people from the United States and other parts of the world who came to Poland with a small portion of a plan with the intent to serve and help.
Improvement Projects
At our English class we spoke with Natalia, who is also a Ukrainian refugee and is now working as the director of the center. She helped us assemble a list of additional needs for Snyadetski that went from around 20 people to over 100 people overnight. Their increased demand and refugee residents contributed to quite the shopping list.
They needed solutions to better store and organize toys and games in the kid’s area, mirrors for the common restrooms, a clothes dryer, and many other items. They had been using two small washing machines for over one hundred people and the only dryer they had was broken. We had planned to visit other locations, but after seeing the need, we decided we would concentrate our efforts on this location; there was so much work to be done.
After compiling the list, we set off to Ikea on Wednesday. We bought a big shelf with cubbies and matching bins to organize the children’s toy room. Mindie and Katie bought some fun and bright pictures to make it feel like a creative and inviting room, as opposed to a corner of an abandoned hospital from a horror movie.
We purchased 50-100 suction cup hooks and clothes hangers so that people could hang their things on the concrete and tile walls. Most items were being stored on the floor or under cots, but space was scarce.
When we returned to the center, Mindie and Katie started assembling the shelf and organizing the toy room. Brodie and I decided to continue shopping and finding more items on the list, specifically, a dryer. Because there was nowhere to vent and no official hookups, they had to have a condensing dryer. Condensing dryers are more expensive, but they don’t require vents because they focus more on blowing hot air on the wet clothes and absorbing the moisture rather than releasing it through vents. We needed to track one down.
Other items on our list included bikes for the children to ride and one for a lady named Jana. She and her son Misha had been in Poland for a couple months. Their apartment building in Ukraine was destroyed by a missile. Sadly, their neighbors and Misha’s friend were killed in the strike. Misha had been missing for 3-hours after the bombing when the safety team found him. Jana and Misha used to ride bikes together, but everything was lost. They came with nothing but their documents, which they were fortunate to have assembled and arranged prior to the bombing just to be prepared.
Misha was gifted a bike at a previous refugee center, so we decided buying Jana a bike of her own would be a wonderful way to bring some comforts from home and it would provide Jana a way to search for work. I was worried about the optics of buying something for just one person and not all and had originally wanted to buy a couple bikes from the center. That was the original plan, but we were later convinced that common bikes would get broken or stolen, whereas individual gifts would be watched over, protected, and better cared for. We decided to buy two common bikes for the children to share and one for Jana.
While we were buying bikes and the dryer, Katie and Mindie were re-doing the toy room. A boy named Sasha, maybe 11 -years-old, took over the shelf building and did an amazing job. Then he recruited his friends to help organize the toy bins. The cleanliness, organization, and new pictures made a huge difference. They were eager to help and were so appreciative of the simple improvements to their living situation.
All the walls were tile or cement, so we purchased bathroom mirrors and hung them with temporary hooks. Sadly, the first two I hung this way fell and broke. We decided to leave the remaining four and avoid hanging them altogether.
While I was failing at hanging mirrors, Mindie and Katie made friends with a lady named Victoria with a 10-year-old son. She spoke great English. Her husband is a farmer and stayed in Ukraine to work, but she couldn’t take the daily fear and stress of the bombs, so she brought her son to Poland. She found part-time work while in Poland and they are waiting for the time when they can return home.
Each family had their own unique story with struggle, loss, and fear as a common narrative. They wanted stability, familiarity, and family. We tried to match any gap we could with the resources and means we had with us at the time.
