Latest / Voices for Voices® / How Humanity is Saving Ukrainian Refugees | Episode 97

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How Humanity is Saving Ukrainian Refugees | Episode 97 · Voices for Voices®

• 0:00
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Welcome to the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast sponsored by Redwood Living.
• 0:06
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thank you for joining us today.
• 0:08
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I am Justin Alan Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, host and humanitarian.
• 0:17
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• 0:28
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• 0:30
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• 0:45
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• 1:18
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• 1:22
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• 1:27
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• 1:33
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• 1:37
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• 2:13
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• 2:33
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: On today's show we are grateful to have a couple of individuals who are instrumental to helping individuals temporarily live and relocate from from Ukraine while the the Russian aggression has occurred, and these two individuals I was able to meet on our mission trip a couple weeks back, where we were able to go to Kyiv, Ukraine, but then we were also able to go to Constanta, Romania, and that's where I met these two individuals, our guests, and they are the reason for the, the organization and for what occurs on a day-to-day basis of helping others.
• 3:25
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: They are with the organization Life for Ukraine and joining us via zoom today in this episode from Constanta, Romania, are Claudio and Alex.
• 3:37
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thank you both for joining us.
• 3:39
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thank you for the invite.
• 3:43
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: You're welcome and it was an absolute pleasure to meet, meet both of you, to hear the background and the story of how Life for Ukraine got started.
• 3:54
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So, for our viewers, our listeners, those checking out the transcript for this episode can maybe talk a little bit about that.
• 4:03
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Alex or Claudio, however you want to tag team that.
• 4:08
  Claudieu: I'm gonna start with the the beginning, which was the actual conflict that started in in Ukraine.
• 4:16
  Claudieu: My brother-in-law was a pastor for the Life for Ukraine church in the US, saw what was happening at that time.
• 4:22
  Claudieu: He talked to his congregation, got some donations from them and then he came to Romania to see what we can do in terms of helping people that are coming through the the border.
• 4:33
  Claudieu: So together we went to the border and for four days was from 8 in the morning until 1.30 at night we went there.
• 4:45
  Claudieu: We helped the refugees.
• 4:46
  Claudieu: We tried to support them with with transportation from the border to wherever destination they used to have, either from Stanza or either Bucharest or maybe even outside Romania, maybe Germany or Poland or whatever.
• 5:00
  Claudieu: So we were there.
• 5:02
  Claudieu: It was really high impact days that we did.
• 5:07
  Claudieu: We couldn't imagine the the level of problem or the level of the need that the people, the refugees, needed at that time.
• 5:19
  Claudieu: We were working together, we were volunteers when we're working with the Romanian Romanian organization and also the government organization as well.
• 5:30
  Claudieu: And then, once we started getting the refugees refugees towards Constanza then we met Alex.
• 5:39
  Claudieu: Alex is born and raised in Constanta and he was already doing great work in terms of housing and providing food for refugees.
• 5:50
  Claudieu: I'm going to let Alex and Finjan from here.
• 5:56
  Alex: I met Justin and his wife, which is from Romania, and I think she is one of the reasons that everything was started, because she's from the same city as I am and she came here to that Romania from the from the health refugees, and she gave me a call in one night and asking me if I can provide some housing, or I think there were all of them.
• 6:30
  Alex: They were there with two cars, all of the luggage and the people, and I said I don't have enough place because at that time I only had about six places left.
• 6:44
  Alex: And she said, okay, we can pay six and I can take the other six and I would take them housing in somewhere in Kostinieshch.
• 6:53
  Alex: We found the villa in there and I said, okay, we can bring them.
• 6:57
  Alex: I think that we still use now.
• 7:05
  Alex: It's a building of offices which, when the world started, I transformed it into just a refugee house and, luckily for me, at that time we had some beds all beds that we used to have on now and one of our old ship and we mounted them over there.
• 7:36
  Alex: And, okay, we had those small offices that was rented in West Country League and then we mounted those beds and we started to receive the refugees.
• 7:52
  Alex: I think on 2nd, on 3rd of March 2022 and we should be the dates that were first bed adjusting and later I was getting a lot of help because at that time, besides that, I was able to transform the building into a refugee house.
• 8:19
  Alex: Then I was also paying for the electricity, the water, but this is like a sustain by myself, and I needed food and 50 people each day.
• 8:32
  Alex: It's not that easy.
• 8:33
  Alex: So I had a lot of NGOs and, thanks God, I also had some honest people even that were coming from Ukraine and they were staying there one night or two nights until they found a place to live.
• 8:49
  Alex: They were willing to pay for something only because I was helping other refugees that could not afford them hotel or somewhere to go, and I refused categorically the money.
• 9:03
  Alex: They were still insisting that because they were helping their other national people and not me.
• 9:13
  Alex: They are helping others in the same situation as there, but they don't have any possibilities, and so what I'm going to say is that they are also honest people, that they know that some other refugees do not have their possibilities and they are willing to help.
• 9:36
  Alex: Also, and besides those people also had some NGO international NGO and people that was coming with food from their own houses because they heard about the center that I opened and I had 15 or 16 people that were volunteers that wanted to help.
• 10:09
  Alex: That was great, seeing a lot of people helping their, mounting beds and cooking food for them and doing everything.
• 10:18
  Alex: You know, because we were at the beginning and we had to put everybody that could come up with whatever they could.
• 10:27
  Alex: I mean, we needed everything at that moment.
• 10:30
  Alex: We had nothing, you know.
• 10:31
  Alex: We only had that empty building and we had to build another two toilets because for 50 people with the toilets were not enough.
• 10:42
  Alex: We had to build a new kitchen, we had dry washer and I remember that Justin came with the washing machines and with the dryer also.
• 10:57
  Alex: Well, actually, when I first met him, justin wanted to give me 200 dollars and I said no, and I had the money, I can do it by myself.
• 11:07
  Alex: And he said, okay, what do you need to help?
• 11:09
  Alex: I said the washing machine and he went back to the state and he paid for two washing machines and two dryers and he sent it over.
• 11:20
  Alex: So that counted a lot at that time because he said okay, and after that we got close and I managed to present him another building which in front of mine, that.
• 11:46
  Claudieu: Helped a lot as well.
• 11:49
  Alex: From Yash.
• 11:49
  Alex: He was also hiring buses, paying hotels for refugees and he had a building in Konstantzha for his workers because he had a team here working for his business.
• 12:03
  Alex: He had a rock mine and he was willing to transform his building also in a refugee center, as I did.
• 12:17
  Alex: And then I talked to Justin and I asked Justin if he's willing to help with I don't know, with something, whatever he can, maybe with some beds or something, because he didn't have beds, bunk beds, we need it.
• 12:29
  Alex: And then Justice said to me let me think about it.
• 12:34
  Alex: We had a video conference and he said let me put the body for half an hour and I will call back.
• 12:39
  Alex: And he called back and he said I will take over the building if you're willing to give it to me.
• 12:43
  Alex: And I said okay, we can do that.
• 12:47
  Alex: And he took over and he opened another center here in Konstantzha.
• 12:52
  Alex: So now we have established a new NGO together and we have two buildings, two centers for a house of refugees receiving refugees, and now our centers are almost full because before the government was pumping refugees with that accommodation by giving money to their owners, that was giving accommodation for refugees, but now they do not pay more and only for a period of refugees have to work, the money is less than they were before and a lot of refugees are coming back to our centers.
• 13:48
  Alex: So now we are almost full and we support them not only with accommodation, but we also give them food.
• 14:03
  Claudieu: English classes medicine, whatever they need.
• 14:08
  Alex: We take them to the hospital, we take them to the police to get the temporary protection.
• 14:18
  Alex: And I can tell you more of that because he's our partner and he's more involved, as I am very active in helping.
• 14:33
  Claudieu: Like I suggested when we met, you were asking what I do.
• 14:36
  Claudieu: I said that I coordinate, but I'm also the plumber, the handyman, the one that goes to the hospital, the one that goes to the government official.
• 14:44
  Claudieu: So whatever is needed, that's what I do.
• 14:50
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Yeah, and you have corporate background and you put that on hold to do this work.
• 15:01
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Can you just talk a little bit about that?
• 15:05
  Claudieu: Yeah.
• 15:05
  Claudieu: So after those four days where we did the volunteer work, I went back to Bucharest for work because I couldn't get some more time.
• 15:12
  Claudieu: Justin went to the US, so it had a really huge impact for me.
• 15:17
  Claudieu: Now, after that, the centers were developed and at one point Justin reached out to me and said hey, we need a person with experience that would run this center in Konstantzom.
• 15:31
  Claudieu: I had a bit of thought because for me it was like 180 degrees change.
• 15:35
  Claudieu: It was totally different from what I was doing, from project management in a corporation.
• 15:40
  Claudieu: But then I said yes, I came to Konstantzom, started working, picking up as much of the task as possible and at the moment now there are two centers that I'm running.
• 15:54
  Claudieu: Sometimes it's a bit of a hassle, it's a lot, but you always see the silver lining of your job.
• 16:00
  Claudieu: You always see the impact and comparing to, let's say, an office job, a cubicle job, you will always see the result directly of the impact that you're having on these people, the people, the children, the whole community.
• 16:20
  Alex: And besides that, what I would do is meaning that he's in contact with those people that are really need to help because they cannot manage by themselves.
• 16:31
  Alex: Imagine that they don't know language.
• 16:34
  Alex: They don't know even English.
• 16:35
  Alex: The most critical thing is that they don't know even the Latin alphabet.
• 16:41
  Alex: When they come here and arrive in a country that uses Latin alphabet and the English language, which language that they don't know?
• 16:55
  Alex: They really need help, and they how would you is there for them.
• 17:07
  Alex: I was to do that also.
• 17:08
  Alex: We were doing that together, but now I also have businesses.
• 17:12
  Alex: We have family business and I have some others think that I have to take care of, but Claudio now is doing most of the work and is running those centers.
• 17:27
  Claudieu: Alex is still modest.
• 17:28
  Claudieu: We do still stuff together, because sometimes one person eats a lot and sometimes we do stuff together.
• 17:34
  Claudieu: Besides, alex was my best friend.
• 17:37
  Claudieu: Now my second best friend is a translator on the phone.
• 17:40
  Claudieu: So that's how you get things done, otherwise you're going to have issues.
• 17:48
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Yeah, coming from that corporate life to where you're at now, you have transferable skills.
• 17:58
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So there are skills that you utilize in corporate and in this line of work and being an instructor here in the States and don't have to be a professor or instructor to understand.
• 18:14
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But what I've tried to convey to my students is when you go to an interview, when you apply to a job, one of the big things they say is well, I don't have the experience, I don't have the skills needed, and I try to convey you have a lot of the skills, whether it's working in teams, presenting writing papers, project management, and can you maybe talk just a little bit more in depth to that, some of those skills that you're bringing to the table here.
• 18:50
  Claudieu: So the first thing that you need to have is be very well organized.
• 18:55
  Claudieu: Whatever you put off for any other reason that you don't have a good organization, that things will come by to you back.
• 19:01
  Claudieu: Same as a job, same as here.
• 19:03
  Claudieu: People need your help now, they don't need it later.
• 19:06
  Claudieu: I used to do a lot of presentation in PowerPoint.
• 19:10
  Claudieu: I used to do a lot of Excel, reporting stuff like that.
• 19:12
  Claudieu: I still do it at this job because I have Excel with people, Excel with birthdays, excel with people that need funding, excel with people that need medicine.
• 19:22
  Claudieu: So lots and lots of Excel.
• 19:24
  Claudieu: Sometimes we need to do PowerPoint presentation saying, hey, how many people did we help?
• 19:27
  Claudieu: How did we manage?
• 19:30
  Claudieu: What was the period that we helped them?
• 19:31
  Claudieu: So it's still the skills that you have in your previous job in my case, the corporation.
• 19:37
  Claudieu: You still use them day to day, indeed.
• 19:41
  Claudieu: There's a more in this job.
• 19:43
  Claudieu: There's a more, a lot more mobility, because you have to go to different offices, you have to go to different locations to help refugees or you have to do for a bit of shopping.
• 19:55
  Claudieu: So it all helps in the long run.
• 19:59
  Claudieu: I used to think that I used to come to this job and do totally different stuff.
• 20:03
  Claudieu: I still have the back office stuff like files and presentation and stuff like that, so it's still there.
• 20:10
  Claudieu: Of course the experience helps and also the human part.
• 20:16
  Claudieu: I used to be a team leader in the corporation.
• 20:18
  Claudieu: Then I switched to project management.
• 20:20
  Claudieu: The team leader always helped because it's about human interaction how people perceive you, how they follow whatever you tell them, how they help you in return of this.
• 20:31
  Claudieu: So all of the things that you do kind of intertwines with this current job, even though it's a totally different scope.
• 20:40
  Claudieu: You'll be surprised how much of the things from a corporation transposed into the day-to-day life of running an NGO.
• 20:51
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thank you for that.
• 20:52
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: How can people get involved if they are interested, whether they're a business owner, just an individual that wants to help out with the organization, or that's monetarily?
• 21:06
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Or how would you recommend that they touch base?
• 21:12
  Claudieu: For the monetary base.
• 21:14
  Claudieu: We do have the Life Lutheran Church, which is in Long Island, new York.
• 21:20
  Claudieu: That's where Justin is and there is a donation link there that you can find it on the website.
• 21:27
  Claudieu: If not, after this call I can send it to you as well.
• 21:30
  Claudieu: Just post it there.
• 21:33
  Claudieu: There were a lot of initiatives from people from New York.
• 21:35
  Claudieu: They say they wanted to come to volunteer.
• 21:39
  Claudieu: Indeed, the biggest part was at the beginning, in those three months where we used to get lots and lots of people coming in.
• 21:46
  Claudieu: Now we don't see a lot of people coming in, but we do see a lot of efforts to help people that don't have a place to stay anymore, because now the hotels are opening, people are coming to Constanza for the seaside.
• 22:00
  Claudieu: So at the moment it's still all hands on deck, based on pushing people around and trying to get them some shelter and some food.
• 22:11
  Claudieu: Some people are returning back.
• 22:13
  Claudieu: So back to your question.
• 22:15
  Claudieu: Apart from the donation link, we're still working with, like Eric is a volunteer that helps us out in today-to-day work.
• 22:27
  Claudieu: So that's something that, if someone is interested, I think there are possibilities to support, if not remotely, then if you want to do a three-day course in Constanza of how to work for a center, hit us up.
• 22:45
  Claudieu: We'll be happy to help volunteers.
• 22:50
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Great.
• 22:52
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Any last topics that we didn't cover that you'd like to share?
• 22:58
  Claudieu: So I think the thing that I wanted to cover and I think this is the human aspect of this I was extremely impressed because I didn't do a lot of volunteer work until now.
• 23:08
  Claudieu: I used to do corporation work, corporation work.
• 23:10
  Claudieu: I didn't really do a lot of volunteer because Romena is not really, let's say, a volunteer-based country compared to the US.
• 23:17
  Claudieu: When I went there, those four days left a huge impact for me in order to see how many people came from their home, either took they off or they came there and they're trying to help as much as possible the refugees.
• 23:32
  Claudieu: Meeting Alex, who has started a center without any external support, with his own money, with his own stuff, and he started helping.
• 23:43
  Claudieu: For him it was strangers.
• 23:44
  Claudieu: He didn't know these people.
• 23:47
  Claudieu: They were just people that were in a war.
• 23:49
  Claudieu: They needed help.
• 23:50
  Claudieu: No questions asked.
• 23:52
  Claudieu: Let's see what we can do.
• 23:53
  Claudieu: And this is how this you know, homogenization of people that are trying to support.
• 23:58
  Claudieu: This is how I met Alex.
• 24:00
  Claudieu: This is how working together with Justin, this is how we met you.
• 24:03
  Claudieu: So people converging on the same scope and, at the end of the day, it's helping people.
• 24:08
  Claudieu: So this is the human aspect.
• 24:10
  Claudieu: I was overwhelmed, to say the least when I used to see lots and lots of people helping out and meeting new people that had the same goal and have the same willingness to support.
• 24:21
  Alex: I was telling you when you were here that before I opened my center with this guy from the eye that I told you that you were also involved with refugees.
• 24:34
  Alex: He brought something to the gate about two buses and we went in minutes to three trucks.
• 24:46
  Alex: We got 20 people.
• 24:47
  Alex: I'm sorry, only one bus, 20 people in one of my friends, tila, who has a tourist, tila, in the city center of Kostanzai and she also received refugees.
• 25:00
  Alex: She accepted refugees but the only condition we had was to keep them until the summer, because in the summer there's a business going.
• 25:12
  Alex: Even when the summit came, he kept another seven or eight, seven or few rooms with refugees because he couldn't throw them out.
• 25:23
  Alex: He's another good friend of mine, antoni, his name, and so the first refugees that we received.
• 25:29
  Alex: It would then one 28, I think 28 of February, and this is what I wanted to mention also.
• 25:38
  Claudieu: So people that had hotels, they put them up for free to the refugees, so that really counted a lot yeah.
• 25:46
  Alex: I also had a friend of mine that gave us about seven or eight apartments I don't know how many we were able to accommodate there, around 50 persons, something like that for free.
• 26:04
  Alex: She gave us the apartments for free, but only until the summit also, of course, because it's their business.
• 26:10
  Alex: We can understand, yeah.
• 26:16
  Claudieu: And you do make a lot of connections with people.
• 26:19
  Claudieu: So now, working with refugees for more than a year now, we are in contact with different NGOs, we are in contact with the Romanian government institutions, so it's always good to have networking skills as well, because you can have your ears open for people that need support, and we constantly get either phone calls or messages saying, hey, I have this old lady, I have this family, I have these children, I have multiple people that need support and they ask and we cannot house them if we're poor or if we try to find any other solution.
• 26:55
  Claudieu: So that's extremely important working as a team with everyone.
• 27:00
  Alex: And because I was telling you about the woman, the friend of mine, that can give us eight apartments.
• 27:06
  Alex: Sandra is her name.
• 27:09
  Alex: I remember that she was calling me because she was telling me that he had one woman with two kids and when she heard the NATO helicopters was hiding under the pink with her kids and she was very scared.
• 27:23
  Alex: So we had pretty dramatic situations with people really scared of the world and that woman needed also psychiatrist help and she was here when we were by herself with the kids and it was very difficult.
• 27:38
  Alex: We had many situations like that but thanks God we could provide it just a little help that we could and hope that counted for the people that were needed, that needed that help.
• 27:58
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Great.
• 27:58
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Well, thank you both for joining from Constancia Romana, so we weren't able to do it in person, but this is the next best way to do it.
• 28:07
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thank you, claudio, thank you, alex.
• 28:10
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: If you'll stick around, we'll grab some photos for promo and we'll go from there.
• 28:19
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And we also want to thank you, our viewers, our listeners.
• 28:24
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: If you're reading our transcript about this episode, this episode was about Life for Ukraine, organization that is centered in Constancia, romania, helping Ukrainian refugees everything from housing to food, doctor's appointments, working with the government and the police and really across the board and great work that they're doing, and I was grateful to be able to spend just a couple of days seeing the people there and visiting.
• 29:00
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: If you're able to help out monetarily, please check out the link that we'll be adding in the show notes, as well as you could check out the Facebook page, life for Ukraine.
• 29:18
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: You can get through that way too, that donate section.
• 29:24
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So thank you again to our guests, alex and Claudio, for joining us, and this has been another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast.
• 29:37
  Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I am Justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director at Voices for Voices, and until next time, we hope you have a great day and be a voice for you or somebody in need.