The Beginning

Letter from our honorary President

In late February 2022, Bill Hayes had seen so many news reports of Ukrainian refugees, primarily women and children, flooding the border with Poland; but with their husbands and fathers turning around to defend their country.  After donating to an international charity and calling various charities to volunteer and getting nowhere, and feeling no involvement, he decided to go to Poland, lend a hand and help the Ukrainian refugees.  Bill and son Rob, and a friend from University days, Willard Boss, travelled to Krakow from the USA in April 2022 to do what they could, by renting a van and offering help.   Now, after over three years of delivering humanitarian aid and assistance in both Poland and Ukraine, Mission For Ukraine LLC continues its work.   What was intended as a short term trip to Poland has turned into a long-term commitment and dedication to Ukrainian refugees and Ukrainians injured by the war.   Of course, none of this would have been possible without donations from over 600 caring friends and family.

The only plan for the first trip to Poland in April 2022 was to deliver backpacks and duffle bags to refugees and provide transportation for women and children who needed to move beyond the border.   Their plans changed when they arrived in Krakow.  Before leaving the US, they were connected with a young Polish man who became their “Sherpa” and guardian angel.  Karol Kras is still working with Mission for Ukraine today.   The Mission’s guiding principle was and remains that it will be “100% direct aid” and donations will be used solely for the purpose of buying supplies, food, equipment, transportation, and whatever else might be needed by Ukrainian refugees.  This is true today as Mission for Ukraine is a two-person vehicle with no overhead and all travel and accommodation costs are paid by Bill and his Mission partner, Frank Donnelly.  The Mission is not a  US tax “501(c)(3)” as that would require more overhead.   

Throughout the remainder of 2022, with the war still raging in Ukraine, Bill and a friend from Wyoming, John Carey and later, Frank continued going to Poland and into Ukraine to deliver goods and food and to ensure that their aid was being delivered where needed.  Over the course of about 18 months, the Mission bought and shipped 80 pallets of food – from stews and soups, to canned beans and macaroni, to coffee, salt and sugar – into Ukraine.   In addition, the Mission contracted a Polish company to make over 7,500 high calorie and high protein ready to eat meals in pouches, which could feed two people.  The Mission worked with their Ukrainian partner to deliver food boxes (from the food pallets) and pouches to villages in Ukraine.  Working with another US volunteer, the Mission established a warehouse facility on the Polish-Ukrainian border to receive hundreds of tons of donated goods from Europe.  This food, goods, medical and other equipment, blankets, clothes, and pet food were offloaded at the warehouse and later sent by van and smaller trucks into Ukraine, primarily into areas recently reconquered by Ukraine.   As a part of this, the Mission purchased two vans, a Renault delivery truck, an ambulance, a firetruck, and a city bus.  The firetruck was used to deliver drinking water to those towns and villages where the Russians had destroyed their water systems.  The ambulance was later used as a mobile pharmacy by Ukrainian doctors and by American volunteers to evacuate elderly people from their basement homes on the front line.   

Working in Warsaw, the Mission assisted with art classes at the Modalinksa Refugee Center, which at the time, housed 4,500 women, children and elderly men.   Several hundred younger Ukrainian children were going to a school in the building, run by Love Does, an American charity.   Bill and Frank were introduced to an art therapy teacher, Lilia Stadnik, a refugee from Kherson. The Mission agreed to support Lilia’s art therapy program for refugee mothers and children.  The Mission secured free space on the ground floor in Hines Poland’s Wola Center in central Warsaw.  The Mission  purchased all of the easels, paints, equipment and supplies for Lilia to begin her art therapy classes at Hines.   The Mission later engaged Lyudmyla, a refugee from Mariupol, to teach art therapy.  The Mission also supports a woodworking class for adults and children, which is taught by Lilia’s husband, Leszek, several times per week.

Our Mission met with the Love Does School in early 2023.  This is a school for Ukrainian children who cannot afford to go to the Ukrainian schools in Warsaw and who do not want to attend the Polish schools as the Ukrainian children have experienced bullying and learning challenges.  Love Does school is a cooperation between Life Polska Church – Warsaw and Love Does.

Over time, as it became easier to transport goods and equipment into Ukraine, with lorries able to travel deep into Ukraine, the Mission realized it needed to plan for more impactful and longer-term projects, including those for a post-war Ukraine.  Frank and Bill were introduced to Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, both located in Houston, Texas.  The two institutions wanted to do something in Ukraine, but were uncertain how to proceed.   With the Mission’s guidance, trips were made to Warsaw, Łódź and Lviv to locate potential projects in surgery, neonatal, OB-GYN, and prosthetics.   Ultimately, after aerial attacks on Lviv, another Ukrainian hospital was found on the Slovakia border.  At that time, Baylor’s Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Department became involved.   They sourced a 3-D printer made in the United States at an extremely reasonable cost for printing sockets for below-knee amputees.  The Mission bought and shipped the 3-D printer to Ukraine where it is now installed at the Transcarpathian Regional Clinic Hospital in Uzhhorod, Ukraine.    

TODAY

From a simple beginning, to provide aid to Ukrainian refugees where needed, the Mission has grown and now provides support and guidance for these programs:

Warsaw Activities

Art Therapy

The Mission supports multiple painting, crafts classes and woodworking in our art therapy programs with the three teachers.  Lilia teaches art therapy two days per week for students at the Love Does School and holds art therapy classes six days a week at Hines Wola Center.  Luydmyla teaches five days a week at local Ukrainian schools in Warsaw and does several classes per week at the Polish Museum of Jewish history (POLIN).  Lyudmyla also organizes summer camps for many of her students and these camps provide arts and crafts for the children five days per week.  Leszek expanded our art therapy classes for Ukrainian refugee women and children with the woodworking classes held five days a week. Both Lilia and Leszek also teach at the POLIN Museum from time to time.   Altogether, the Mission’s art therapy classes touch about 250 women and children each week.  The women and children, who come together to enjoy companionship with fellow Ukrainians in a stress-free and creative environment, are all extremely grateful for the Mission’s art therapy classes. Our Mission has witnessed and heard from many adults and children about their art therapy experience and how it has positively affected their lives.  In addition, Lilia, Lyudmyla and Leszek have also benefitted as teachers as they deliver hope and love to so many, they have begun to overcome their own trauma from the war. 

Life Polska Foundation / Love Does School – Warsaw: 

About 120 Ukrainian refugee children attend this school and over 200 are on the waiting list. Recently, the school moved into all the space in their building.  The Mission provides a monthly financial donation to support hot lunches for all the school children.  Without that, many students would not have a lunch every day.   The Mission also supports the school’s physical education/sports/dance class and the school’s “Summer in the City” program so the children and young adults remain active when school is closed.  Upon completion of the school expansion in early 2025, we provided financial support for new furniture.

Medical Volunteers: Our Mission supports “Foundation in the Meantime.” This is a group of Polish and international volunteer medics who have been working on the Ukrainian frontlines since 2014, when Russia initially invaded eastern Ukraine. They provide life-saving aid to military personnel in fiercely contested battle areas.  Our Mission has supported them in the past by purchasing medical equipment and hosted them to fundraise in Texas.  With financial donations from an American volunteer, his supporters and our Mission, we have purchased over $30,000 worth of medical equipment. 

Ukraine – Prosthetic Clinic

Our Mission has been working with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) – both based in Houston, Texas – over the past 15 months to open a clinic for prosthetic 3D manufacture as well as fitting and rehabilitation at our partner hospital, Transcarpathian Regional Clinic Hospital (TCRH) in Uzhhorod, Ukraine.  The other key partners are Invent Medical (Ostrava, Czech Republic) and Filaments Innovation (Allentown, Pennsylvania).  TCRH has completely refurbished two areas to accommodate the prosthetic 3D printing and fitting as well rehabilitation.  In June last year, our Mission purchased and shipped the 3D printer from Pennsylvania to Invent Medical and they tested and fine tuned their proprietary software for scanning limbs and proper fitting.  Importantly, working with Filaments and BCM, Invent was able to improve on the plastic filament material used in the printer to create the socket. 

Since late 2024, the TRCH clinic has been making below-knee prosthetics for amputees.  BCM set a goal of 25 to 30 “successful” prosthetics for patients to conclude that the process works. In this event, the plan would be to add a printer or more in Uzhhorod and expand to other hospitals in Ukraine.  Our Mission hired a US volunteer to live in Uzhhorod to coordinate the efforts of the various stakeholders. 

Currently, ours is one of the fastest of a handful of 3-D printers in Ukraine and can produce a “socket” in two hours. Other printers require around twelve hours. The entire process to scan, 3-D print and fit a patient with a new prosthetic leg takes about four hours, whereas, the traditional method, using plaster molds, can take several days. Our Mission enable the Uzhhorod hospital’s technicians and rehabilitation experts to be trained by BCM and Invent Medical in the Czech Republic in late 2025.  The total cost for a new prosthetic, with all the parts, will be about $600 per patient, or one-tenth of the cost of existing prosthetic making methods. 

In Ukraine, the need is immense, with an estimated 40,000 below-knee amputees (men, women and children).  It is also estimated that only about 600 new prosthetic devices were made in 2024 in all of Ukraine.

Other Activity

Fair Dog Denmark:

This is a volunteer women’s group that collects hundreds of tons of donations in Denmark and neighboring countries and transports it all to Ukraine.  When Fair Dog needed a sealed container to store pet and human food in their barn, or be closed down by the authorities, one of our donors bought and sent a ten-foot container to Fair Dog.  The donor also provided a second container when needed.  Our Mission periodically provides financial support to pay for lorries to send the goods and supplies donated to Fair Dog into eastern Ukraine for distribution.