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Eight days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Jillian Schultz was tutoring an international student from Ukraine, who told her about the crisis from her perspective. Schultz immediately realized she needed to do something to help.

“When you hear someone’s story, who’s telling you it’s not just like on (the) news, it hits a different spot,” she said. “(You) understand your privilege and understand that what’s happening here is not what’s happening all around the world.”

Schultz, a senior television, radio and film major in the Newhouse School of Public Communications, then reached out to Taras Colopelnic, the president of Syracuse University’s Ukrainian Club, to plan a drive to collect everyday resources for residents of Ukraine. For the drive, which took place from April 18-30, the club collected items civilians may need, such as shampoo, toothpaste or medicine.

Allen Groves, SU’s vice president of the student experience, also provided 50 cardboard donation boxes that Schultz and Colopelnic placed in buildings across campus, including various fraternity and sorority houses, Schultz said.

“We wanted to do something that every single person feels like this is going to help someone — not just donating money to a GoFundMe or something like that,” Colopelnic said.

Initially, Schultz and Colopelnic thought the drive would be a small way to provide assistance and make a difference. But Schultz was soon taken aback by the response it received. Though she thought the community would fill at most 15 boxes, they’d used almost all of them by the time the drive ended.

“I almost want to cry sometimes,” Schultz said. “I’m so overwhelmed with the best of emotions of how many people were able to respond and how many people reached out personally to me.”

The Ukrainian Club is working with Meest, a shipping company that specializes in transporting humanitarian packages from the U.S. to Ukraine. The process will take time, Schultz said, but the supplies will reach the people that need them.

Taras Colopelnic's lett… by Richard Perrins

Aside from providing aid in Ukraine, the drive’s main mission was to involve the greater campus in efforts to help during the war, something the club itself has also been working toward.

A day before Schultz reached out, Colopelnic sent an email to Chancellor Kent Syverud on behalf of SU’s Ukrainian Club asking to run a university-wide effort to provide humanitarian aid.

“Ukraine is literally defending the principles that allow our great university to exist. Please, let us not be indifferent to their needs,” the email reads. “Let us work together to aid this country that truly deserves our help.”

Colopelnic has been studying in Madrid, Spain this semester, which has made it difficult to coordinate programs within his role as president of the Ukrainian Club, he said, especially since the war has made the semester atypical. Still, he’s focused almost all of his free time on doing anything he can to aid the country, he said.

“People are still there. They’re emerging out of their basements, shelters,” Colopelnic said. “A lot of people are now returning to (their homes), hopefully trying to start to rebuild. And that’s where those things are needed.”

Published on May 2, 2022 at 11:57 pm

Contact Richard: [email protected] | @richardperrins2