Ukrainian refugees find help with a Louisville connection - WAVE 3

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Relief efforts in Eastern Europe have been described as a never-ending scramble for beds, food, and clothing since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A church ministry and camp in central Poland, four hours from the Ukrainian border, is now sharing footage of how they changed into a refugee center. It’s a place where hundreds of people find safety, shelter, and kindness on a daily basis, and it has a surprising Louisville connection.

”People stepped up and wanted to show compassion, wanted to be able to serve, wanted to able to help in any way they could to support our team in Poland,” Gina Wack, the U.S. operations director for Proem, an international evangelical ministry, said.

Wack coordinates volunteers and directs wartime donations to the resettlement of an endless stream of Ukrainian refugees from her one-woman office in Middletown.

”Whether that means helping them to buy supplies or furnishings, basic furnishings for an apartment, or relocate them in Poland or help relocate them to Germany or Holland,” Wack said. “We’re helping make that happen through the donations that we receive.”

Wack said the Polish Proem camp-turned refugee center is operating at capacity. Most of of the refugees are women with children.

”They just want to relax, they want to close their eyes, they want to sleep in peace,” lead pastor Rafal Piekarski said. “Some of the children, they sleep in peace for the first time in weeks.”

For children escaping a war zone, Proem personnel say peace is a relative term.

”They are talking about planes and tanks and war and shootings,” Piekarski said. “And they talk about it as if it’s a daily part of their normal conversation which is very bizarre.”

”It’s very humbling,” Cheryll Kimbler of Louisville said. “It’s very hard to watch.”

Kimbler is among the U.S. volunteers getting a first-hand look at the hardship.

”There was one family who came in and they were eating food so fast, because they had not had food,” she said. " And the director (said) it’s ok, slow down. There will be plenty more tomorrow.”

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