Helping Ukrainians at all costs

The place has become the headquarters of dozens of volunteers who devote themselves body and soul to collecting, sorting and packing basic necessities destined for Ukraine.

Even though sending material goods across the ocean to a war zone is a complex and demanding operation, they are determined to continue until the war is over.

Eight-year-old Camilla is quick to count all the boxes piling up all over the parsonage, but also in the adjacent church.Seventy!, says she, looking proud.

Listen to Marie-Christine Brouillon's radio report at Désautels on Sunday

While she dances her light blond ponytail in all the rooms, her mother, Hanna Tatsenko, makes many phone calls. Sitting on a sofa, computer on her lap and phone in hand, she explains that the goal is to find a plane to send, from Montreal, a hundred pallets of boxes filled with personal hygiene products. , medication, dressings and non-perishable food.

For the past few days, we've been shopping around, talking to different airlines, finding out which can give us a better price for what we want to send. People call to give us money to pay for a plane, but we want to use this money wisely, explains the young Ukrainian mother.

Volunteers Hanna Tatsenko and Marta Zybko are trying to find a plane to send material donations collected in Montreal to Ukraine.

Photo: Radio-Canada / Marie-Christine Bouillon

Marta Zybko is Polish. With Hanna, she takes care of the logistics of the operations. Having worked in finance in the past, she uses her skills and professional connections to help the people of Ukraine and their Canadian diaspora.

I came here one night and asked, "what do you need?" [...] They said: "we need a plane". I said: "OK", and I left, she says.I came back a week later, but there I mobilized what I could for that is coming and it's progressing well.

Marta, Hanna and their fellow volunteers rely on their network in Europe and parts of Ukraine to receive and distribute donations. So far, the organization has managed to send three convoys of products by plane: two from Toronto and one from Halifax. And they arrived safely, according to Marta.

The volunteers of the Ukrainian Church of St. Michael the Archangel also take care of receiving donations. This morning, sisters Nathalie and Andrea Bishyk bring 25 boxes.

This is for Clearpoint Elementary, in Pointe-Claire. [The students] collected all this for Ukraine. And we have other boxes that we will probably bring tomorrow or Friday, launches Nathalie Bishyk.

Marta Zybko chats with sisters Nathalie and Andrea Bishyk who have just dropped off 25 boxes of food and hygiene products collected by students at Clearpoint Elementary School in Pointe-Claire, west of Montreal.

Photo: Radio-Canada / Marie-Christine Bouillon

While the dozen volunteers present transport the boxes from the car to the sorting room in the presbytery, Andrea Bishyk admits to being touched by the crisis that the Ukrainians are going through.

Our dad is Ukrainian and it affects us. My grandparents came from Ukraine when they were 17. We [know] a lot of people in the community and it breaks our hearts, she said.

The right way to help?

Sending material donations overseas in wartime is not the right way to help, according to François Audet, director of the Institute of International Studies of Montreal and the Canadian Observatory on Crises and Humanitarian Action.

All these supply chains today require more than ever extremely careful control of what we send. And we don't want it to be a wasted effort, we don't want, at the end of all that, when we open the containers sent by planes and which will have taken up a significant resource, that it has completely rotted , he warns.It happens very, very frequently.

According to him, we must remember the mistakes of the past in order not to make them again.

“We have seen it in Haiti in particular, that the containers stay squarely in the port, in Port-au-Prince or even in Miami, for years. And we don't know what to do with it! Even though it was all started with good intentions. »

He believes that it is better to send monetary donations to reputable non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have developed a expertise in the field and networks on the ground, and adds that it is better not to confuse our own need to help with the real needs of the communities concerned.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the non-governmental organizationsNGOsmost often called upon in humanitarian crises. It brings together 192 Red Cross or Red Crescent Societies in as many countries. According to the spokesperson for the Canadian branch, Carole Du Sault, this global movement makes it possible to combine different expertise and to be able to intervene quickly. However, she believes that aid can be organized in several ways.

Obviously there is complexity that comes with the whole logistical issue. But hey, we have our logistics, our ways of doing things, others will find solutions, ways of doing things. In aerial view of everything that is happening at the moment, there is a beautiful solidarity that unfolds. I suspect it will be felt in various ways in Ukraine or elsewhere, she argues.

Carole Du Sault is spokesperson for the Canadian Red Cross.

Photo: Radio-Canada / Marie-Christine Bouillon

Marta Zybko, Hanna Tatsenko and all their fellow volunteers from the St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church in Montreal are committed to helping Ukrainians stuck under the bombs. They will do everything to ensure that the donations collected reach their destination.

But ultimately, their dearest wish is not to find a plane that will allow them to send several convoys of equipment from Montreal, but that this nightmare finally end.

Can you stop the war?, Hanna asks, her eyes watering. Ah yes, Marta breathes.

But they don't have time to cry, we have to get back to work.