Food, medicine and evacuation under shelling: how an American foundation helps victims of the war in Ukraine

Kharkiv, Mariupol and some other Ukrainian cities are under almost round-the-clock shelling. Sometimes humanitarian aid or medicine delivered on time can literally save a person's life. In Ukraine itself, the delivery of aid is carried out by local volunteers, often at serious risk to their lives. At this time, a network of volunteers and organizations outside the country helps to raise funds for the purchase of the most necessary and deliver it to the war zone. These organizations include the Foundation Central Park Angels.

Work on specific needs

The foundation itself is almost 7 years old. Its founder, Dr. Shakhnoz Rustamova, engaged private medical practice in New York, in addition to this, she created a charitable organization specializing in helping people in emergency situations around the globe. Foundation employees and volunteers helped the victims earthquakes in Haiti and held seminars for specialists from "developing" countries.

«Shakhnoz Rustamova is a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist. We have organized schools in these countries to teach how to properly deliver children, provide medical care to women, and so on.", - explains the volunteer of the fund Olga Shved.

Olga admits that the fund has never sought to raise large sums of money, and has specialized in “pointed” assistance - the specific needs of people, which they reported specifically. After the start of the Russian invasion, the main activity of the Central Park Angels was to help Ukrainian volunteers.

«The family of one of our volunteers lives in Mariupol, and we still cannot get in touch with them", - says Olga.

Gradually, more and more people began to accumulate around the fund with specific requests: someone asked to take their relatives out of the war zone, others reported an acute shortage of medicines in occupied or blocked cities, someone just wanted to find their missing loved ones. The fund staff managed to establish close contact with a reliable volunteer from Poland, Kirill. Kirill's wife with two children ended up in Ukraine at the height of the war, and the man purposefully took up the transfer of humanitarian cargo to the cities that were on the front line.

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«We decided to start purchasing humanitarian aid, and we are working closely with Kirill in terms of its delivery, we are trying to bring hot meals and medicines to people. We have proven volunteers, most often from close people whom our employees have known personally for a long time. One of our partners is a local church. We send them money, and they are already buying food and bringing it to people in schools, bomb shelters, hospitals and basements."- explains Olga.

Home delivery is especially needed by the disabled and the elderly, as well as families with children. Sometimes the fund's employees buy food or medicine themselves, while Kirill and other volunteers help to deliver the aid to the border, where it is received by the next volunteers.

«Most often, we work on specific needs, which are also reported to us by volunteers. For example, we bought baby carriers, because Ukrainian mothers sometimes have to cross the border on foot, and they get very tired of carrying their children in their arms for several hours in a row.”, – shares Olga Shved.

Evacuation from the war zone and shelter in America

The main activity of the fund now is the delivery of hot meals and medicines to front-line settlements.

«The next direction that we want to develop is to find families in the United States that could shelter Ukrainian refugees crossing the American border for the first time. My husband's father was once an active member of the Polish Solidarity. He was forced to leave the country with his family under the threat of prison. Then, in the 1980s, strangers volunteered to invite him to the United States and took him into their homes for the first few months until he found a job and got on his feet. Now we are trying to look for families who could help Ukrainians in the same way."- explains Olga.

Another area that the foundation is already working on and that its employees would like to develop further is the evacuation of the civilian population that has been bombed.

«When we receive requests to pick up people, we try to coordinate our volunteers on the ground. We do not have our own buses, but there are volunteers with their own vehicles. We, for our part, help them with the purchase of gasoline and other needs, put them in touch with people who need help. It's kind of a network, we're just bringing together different volunteers', says the volunteer.

«Sometimes we try to hold some fundraising events. We are planning one of these evenings for Vyshyvanka Day, May 19th. This is how we raise funds for primary needs that volunteers tell us about.”, Olga shares.

Shootings and deaths

She admits that the activities of volunteers are fraught with great risk, and sometimes they literally save people at the cost of their own lives.

«We constantly receive reports from volunteers on specific people they are saving. It is extremely difficult to take out refugees in such conditions. For example, I remember how a mother with a seven-year-old child traveled from Mariupol. They were taken to the district center, where the volunteers ran out of petrol. I had to leave the car, after which I had to walk for several hours, and then get to the nearest village by passing cars. Refugees and volunteers had to spend several days in the village looking for gasoline. We gave them money for gasoline, but it was impossible to find it there.", Olga continues.

Volunteers do not hide: columns of refugees are often fired upon, and this applies to both cars and pedestrians.

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«People run at their own peril and risk, because they understand that if they stay where they are, they will most likely be killed anyway. Our guys had to take them out on mined roads, avoiding mines, put metal shields on car doors so that they could protect them from at least some bullets, write “children” on cars, draw crosses”, explains the Central Park Angels volunteer.

Olga admits: even the above measures do not always help.

«Our buses are also shot, some volunteers are killed, others are captured. We had 9 minibuses, bought with our own funds. One of our longtime partners was also there. Anton - a volunteer who still cannot find his mother, who remained in Mariupol. Getting to the city usually takes three days. The guys get to the first cellars, go down there, bring food and take out everyone who asks for it. Sometimes this food is stolen at checkpoints. In the last week, the situation has deteriorated sharply - the Russian troops have simply gone berserk. We lost 5 buses and two drivers were killed", - says Olga.

On one occasion, Russian troops were inspecting drivers carrying humanitarian aid at a checkpoint. According to Olga, the volunteers simply took the food that they managed to get, without considering each jar individually. As a result, some packages ended up with stickers in Ukrainian and slogans like “we will win.” The occupying troops proved to be much more meticulous than the volunteers. Having found the inscriptions, they began to beat the volunteers, and then took them prisoner. About what happened, staff Central Park Angels found out only a few days later.

«They were tortured, beaten, forced to dig their own graves, but then, fortunately, they were released. Unfortunately, not everyone is released.", - Olga admits.

Nevertheless, volunteers continue their work, realizing the risks they face. Foundation staff reminds that each such raid can save more than one human life.

Make a donation to the fund Central Park Angels can by this link, any amount will help volunteers in saving lives in Ukraine.