Hope in the Orphanage Across the Border
How United Aid Foundation Brought Ukrainian Families Back Together At An Unlikely Place
By Claire Tomasi
Oksana Bashkirtseva and family
Nestled in the Romanian city of Botosani is an orphanage. Most of the children have grown up, and the rooms are empty leaving trace memories of childhoods forgotten, traded for new lives found scattered across Eastern Europe. Fifteen years prior, this orphanage had been funded by United Aid Foundation for the purpose of raising the young children, to give them the skills needed to thrive in life. Today, the orphanage is full, not with children, but families fleeing Ukraine.
When John Alex and his team at United Aid Foundation first entered Romania to provide help and services to Ukrainian refugees at the border, they were unsure what they would find. Having returned to the orphanage in Romania to act as a base for operations, prepping the rooms for refugees, and carefully planning strategies for getting them safely there, the team worked through many days and nights of meticulous preparation. Though equipped with hygiene kits, tents, and resolve, the team at UAF gave the best of what they had available in a humanitarian crisis, hope.
Through grueling hours of processing, losing details in translation, and long dark nights, John and his team came to house two families in the orphanage. The first, a young woman, her two sons, aged ten and fourteen, and three cats. Together, the team at United Aid Foundation and the woman and her children came together for a warm meal, and to share stories and moments of silence. Leaving Ukraine with only the bags on their backs, the family rested. Her eldest son wanted only a SIM card to play mobile games, to drown out what memories might have been made at the border crossing.
The second family, a mother, her teenage daughter, young son and grandmother arrived, to bring echoes of home to a place unknown. Upon seeing the grandmother exit the van to stay at the orphanage, Alex recounts an emotional moment. Upon sitting at the dining room table, John asked the mother a question.
“What do you think of this house, and how do you feel about us Americans coming to help you?”
To which she replied.
“These are like Americans in the movies. I can’t even believe it.”
Between days of helping processed refugees restore their dignity with hygiene kits, communicating across languages, and working long hours as the days turned into nights, United Aid Foundation volunteers worked tirelessly to provide relief for the Ukrainian people. As help begets help, waves of refugees helping other refugees overcame tables of toothbrushes, tents of towels and soaps and feminine products in a chain of humanitarian aid that tided over everyone.
United Aid Foundation team member, Cenovio Villa reflects on past missions to bring aid to places ailing from hurricanes, famine, and poverty in relation to the developing situation in Ukraine.
“The thing that is bothering me there, is lack of resolution. Everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve taken people to where they don’t need help anymore. This trip was a completely different feeling of helplessness. But we will continue to work until we’ve run out of time or money.”
When asked a final question about his feelings regarding United Aid Foundations return to the United States, he says:
“There is no closure here. We will get closure when families are reunited.”
Where there is no closure, there is the strength of the human spirit. To see each other through impossible moments. To come together and help one another in times of need. This is what United Aid Foundation aims to do.
Back at the orphanage, a mother calls her husband on Facetime, the first they’ve communicated since her departure. Members of United Aid Foundation wave to him in the background, and she tells her husband that she and her family, are safe. Relief washes over his face, knowing his family and loved ones have crossed the border and await him in pursuit of life elsewhere.
In the final moments of the call, air raid sirens ring in the Romanian skies. A solemn reminder there is more work to be done, more people to help, and more at stake than ever before.
Where Alex and his team at United Aid Foundation bring hygiene kits, supplies, housing, and safe passage to refugees, to two families, they brought warm meals, restored dignity, and new hope in the orphanage. There is humanity in human need, in the desire to help each other in dire times, in the chase for safety and happiness. In things both small and large, humanitarian efforts bring what they can, hope.
And hope, is what United Aid Foundation brings.