Olia Manuik and Tatyana Brunevich are pictured in the Joy Center.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series exploring Webster City and Webster City Rotary’s connection to Ukraine. As you will read, the writer, Doug Bailey, is working from an intensely personal perspective.

By DOUG BAILEY

At the end of WWII the Northwestern border of Romania was adjusted West and South, moving a large population of Romanians into Ukraine.

Over the years, various Romanian churches continued to serve congregations now in the Ukraine and worked to establish new congregations as mission churches. This network of Ukraine churches offered the perfect conduit for the religious community in Sighisoara to provide relief to Ukranians whose lives had been up-ended by the Russian invasion.

The fighting had disrupted and destroyed supply lines.

Very quickly there was a shortage of essential supplies: food, medicine, fuel, generators, diapers, baby food, etc. And, suddenly, many Ukrainians found themselves as refugees, not knowing where to go or how to get there.

Long-time Sighisoara Baptist minister Florin Boruga, with his deep connections in the community and the surrounding villages, became the unofficial leader of the local relief committee. Along with the assistance of his wife, Paula, other ministers and area missionaries, he began to put together the necessary components to deliver supplies into Ukraine and bring back refugees seeking a way out.

Into this effort came local missionary Tim Bailey and his childhood community with its Rotary Club.

While we were in Sighisoara in March staying with our son, Tim, and his family, Pastor Florin had contacted Tim and wanted us to come out and witness the loading of a van of food that Rotary Club funds had been used to purchase. We got there and took pictures and met the two volunteers who would be on the road for at least 10 hours each way to deliver this cargo of cooking oil, flour, rice and canned meat.

They were headed to a village church in central western Ukraine. The village minister had reached out to Florin for help.

Nancy and I sat down with Florin and Paula for a discussion about the efforts of the committee and where efforts stood now over two years into the conflict.

First off, he wanted us to know how thankful he was for the support from the Webster City Rotary Club from the very beginning of the war.

“We could not have done all that was done without your financial support and we definitely could not keep up our current work providing food to local refugees and to the people still in Ukraine,” he said.

“There is a large backup of refugees just over the border in Ukraine who are looking for places to go,” he said, “and Sigishora is one of those places that has been recommended by some of the church pastors in western Ukraine who are familiar with our program here. But we do not have housing.

“Most of all the refugees have lost their homes, most of their belongings and, of course, their jobs,” he explained.

“So there is no money for renting apartments and, without a place to live, it is pretty difficult to get a job, and for mothers on their own with young children it is impossible. When the Romanian government was providing a rent subsidy, finding housing was more possible, but when that ended we just could not bring anymore refugees into town unless they had secured their own housing.

“We believe we can host more refugees if the housing situation can be resolved.”

I asked Florin, “With the price of gas equal to approximately $6 per gallon and the drive to deliver food just over the border into Ukraine running 10 to 12 hours each way at a minimum, requiring a volunteer driver to spend at least two days for the trip (generally it takes two volunteers for safety purposes) how does that make any sense? Why not just get the money to a church in Ukraine and let them buy food there?”

He answered, “The problem is when you get anywhere near the fighting there are no stores open, and as you move away from the fighting, up to the border, stores begin to be open but you are not allowed to purchase large quantities. Plus, what you can buy is expensive.”

He added, “We can buy in bulk here at much lower cost and as long as the volunteers are willing we can make it work, even with the price of fuel.”

He went on, “Food is our big problem; there is never enough.” He said it “does not matter if (it’s) in Ukraine where there is a shortage or here where the refugees are not not able to afford what they need.

“Often when the deliveries are ultimately made to the villages in the front lines, Ukrainian military in the area will ask the drivers for food, to the point now where drivers are asking for extra bags for the fighters they might run into.

“Our average monthly budget for food purchases to cover refugees here in Sighisoara and in Ukraine is $2,500.

“We have many different contributors, small and large, from all over; some provide bulk food instead of money, but your Rotary Club’s $1,200 is the only regular contribution. You are the only ones we can count on. Tim knows that.”

The local committee created, with the assistance of UNICEF, a refugee support center in Sighisoara — the “Joy Center” — and was able to hire two Ukrainian social workers, Tatyana Brunevich and Olia Manuik, to organize and operate it. The food pantry operation, which the Webster City Rotary Club continues to support, is now based out of the Joy Center. There is also a preschool for refugee children in a village just outside of Sighisoara.

All of this operates under the nonprofit Light of the World. The Joy Center is located in a tidy three-story commercial-style building in central Sighisoara. Not large, but large enough and right across the street from Lidl grocery store (the European parent of Aldi’s). In the mornings, the classrooms will often host Ukrainian adults for various meetings and after 2 p.m. and into the evenings it is fully occupied by children and teenagers.

In discussing the operation with Tatyana and Olia we learned that there is a Ukrainian school in a village about 20 minutes from Sighisoara where all the school-aged kids go in the morning. The school uses the same curriculum that the kids are used to and is funded by various grants, public and private. This is unique for Ukrainian refugees in Europe. All other countries are requiring that Ukrainian refugees attend the public schools of the country they are in.

Light of the World vans get the kids to school and preschool, then bring them back to the Joy Center in the afternoon. The Joy Center offers the youth tutoring, counseling, crafts, lunch, snacks and teen activities. It also provides the opportunity for a parent to work while kids are in school in the morning and then supervised in the afternoon until early evening. UNICEF originally provided 50% of the budget, but recently cut it to 30%.

Tatyana and Olia are looking into for profit opportunities that could provide jobs for refugees and generate revenue to support Light of the World operations.

I asked Olia if there might be any teenagers willing to talk to me about their refugee experience and the war. She found two young ladies who wanted to talk. What follows is a very abbreviated conversation with one of them. Tatyana and Olia sat in to help with translation.

Daria, 16, went first. What she likes most about living in Sighisoara is “nature, all the trees, birds and open areas that we do not have in my city at home.” She misses her friends from school and all of her family back in Odessa. Her mother, 6-year-old brother and 18-month-old sister have been in Sighisoara for two years. Her parents are separated and her father remains in Odessa working in port warehouse security.

I had a set of questions that I asked both girls and after I had gone through all those with Daria, she asked me if I wanted to know why she was in Sighisoara.

I said yes, if she wanted to tell me. Then it poured out.

“At the beginning of the war it was quiet in Odessa. On July 1, 2022, (she was 14) I was staying at my father’s apartment and I was woken up by a huge sound. I went out of my bedroom and my father was standing at a window looking to see what was happening and a bomb blast blew him back into the room. My dad told me to sit down in the door frame to be safer. He then called my mom; a rocket had just crashed into her apartment building. We went to my mother’s and could not get in the front. It was a first-floor apartment.

“We went around the back and could get in there. In the apartment, my mother who was pregnant was standing in a door frame; my brother (four years old), Sasha, was not there. In the dark my papa began to look for Sasha in all the rocks (concrete debris).

Other men came to help. It was a nine-story apartment building. The rocket went into the third floor. Then we started to hear Sasha crying and the savior men (rescue crew) arrived and were able to dig him out. He had only a concussion and a burn on his head.

“We were very lucky. He does not remember it all. But I do. My teacher lived on the third floor and I seen them carry him out; he died. He was 57 yrs old. After one month we came first to a village outside of Sighisoara and then moved into Sighisoara.”

Daria wanted me to tell her story to the people in America. I promised her I would.