The accidental activist...

In January 2022, I participated in World Central Kitchen's Chef Relief Training. A colleague from this training, Knut Christensen of Paella Works, arrived in Poland shortly after the February 24, 2022 invasion and helped set up the WCK kitchen on the border.  He connected me with the WCK volunteers on the ground via chat and another volunteer, Holly Connor, who became my angel on the ground, was not only cooking in the kitchen, she was helping Ukrainians relocate. She put out an ask to help fund relocations and other immediate needs so I launched a GoFundMe campaign to help her fund transportation, accommodations, supplies and other needs as Ukrainians crossed the border to safety. I was hoping for a few hundred dollars. Within a week, the campaign received $10,000, and the rest is history! 

I arrived in Poland three months later, in early June 2022, to cook with World Central Kitchen for six weeks on the border. While there, I partnered with other NGOs including  UAid.Direct, UkrainianChildren.org, Nash Sokil, KHARPP (and later upon returning to the US, Leleka Foundation, TacMed Team, Insulate Ukraine, and Rotary Clubs), in supplying food, water, clothing, hygiene, medical aid, military clothing and supplies, wood-burning stoves to survive the winter and more life-saving items and services.

Over $100,000 has generously been donated since then and distributed directly to Ukrainians with a small portion going to support the dedicated and selfless volunteers that run these organizations, risking their lives every day to deliver food and supplies to people in need. Many of the people, projects and donations area detailed here on the initial campaign's GoFundMe page.
 

We continue to support families we meet along the way and the organizations above so please consider contributing. Every dollar helps. Every dollar saves lives. Every dollar creates a ripple of impact - we have great ROI! - and enough ripples create a wave so please join me in creating a huge wave of humanitarian aid as we work on our next very impactful projects that I describe below.

The School of Joy - a Mykolaiv Orphanage mental health initiative: In January 2024, I joined the UAid.Direct humanitarian aid run to the southeast front lines. On the way, we stopped at an orphanage in Mykolaiv who had requested help renovating some of the infrastructure. We fell in love with them and are doing much more than their original request. Feed the World kitted out all the teen boys with soccer uniforms and equipment, we purchased 10 looms for the art room and 2 sewing machines. In Summer of 2024, we launched a mental health initiative called "The School of Joy" with Dr Natalia Piskova teaching all the children as well as the the staff mindfulness and meditation through one-on-one and team programs to better manage their emotions from continual air raid sirens, trips to the bomb shelters.

In January 2024, we launched an amazing partnership with the Odessa Police Academy where they work with the children once a month on prevalent issues such as bullying, domestic violence, self-defense and more. The Academy brought the older students for a day of classes and demonstrations and learning, showing these children that they have a future after the orphanage. In the summer of 2024, two students who turned 18 joined the Academy! 

Wood-burning Stoves: These past three winters, we partnered with TacMed Team who manufactures metal wood-burning stoves in Ukraine. Together, we have supplied much of the east and southeast front line villages, shelters, trenches, schools and homes with wood-burning stoves as the power grid is constantly targeted and bombed. You can find our stoves from Kupiansk to Kharkiv, to Dnipro, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and more along the front lines, saving lives in these brutal winters.

Nash Sokil Foundation: "Our Falcon" Foundation was founded by Dr Oksana Myronenko in honor of her mother who was killed in Kyiv in early 2022. Dr Oksana operates gratis on soldiers every day, traveling back-and-forth every week between Kyiv and Ivano-Frankivsk. Dr Oksana founded 3 convalescent homes and supports 5 other facilities for low-mobile elderly refugees to ensure they are treated with care and dignity. Oksana, the team and foundation founded a military vehicle repair shop, support an orphanage, deliver humanitarian aid, fund housing for injured soldiers recovering, help elderly patients integrate into local communities and much, much, much more. 

Thanks to a very generous donation from the Steamboat Springs Rotary Club, we supported Clowns without Borders. From early 2023 to early 2024, we sponsored James the Clown who, from Ireland, brought love, laughter, joy, and awe to thousands of children (and adults!) in hospitals, schools, orphanages and underground bunkers across Ukraine with his joyful programs, infectious laugh, kind heart and mysterious magic tricks. James also went viral across Ukrainian social media for riding his Penny Farthing bike around downtown Kyiv. 

Food/Hygiene Program: The winter of 2023 we supplied seven (7) villages with food and hygiene boxes, feeding and caring for ~2,000 people for four (4) months. 

This is just a sample of the many humanitarian outreach efforts that we have been working on with boots-on-the-ground teams non-stop since early 2022 and we will continue to do so until this horrific invasion is over and Ukraine has recovered.

We couldn't do this work without kind, generous souls and the tireless, brave team on the ground so a huge thank you to you all! Slava Ukraini! Heroyam Slava! Thank you! Dyakuyu!