Help is on the way!
Pomoc jest w drodze!
I’ve been very impressed recently with the generosity of friends and strangers. My call for clothing donations was resoundingly answered, and in the end my girlfriend and I collected over 500 pounds1 of clothes and basic medical supplies.
With the help of my mom, we made two trips this morning to the Syrena Travel Agency to drop off all the boxes. We got a generous discount on shipping, and the owner even printed out some blue and yellow heart stickers to put on the boxes. The boxes will travel by sea to my girlfriend’s cousin in Pokój. His village is continuing to take in refugees, and now has 60+ (instead of 50+ a week ago). The boxes will take 4 to 6 weeks to arrive. In the best case, Russia will have withdrawn by then and the refugees will have returned home. However, it looks like this war will continue for some time, so our donations will help to keep the refugees comfortable.2
The overall shipment weight was 556 lbs. I didn’t measure the empty weight of the boxes, but I’m pretty sure the contents were over 500 lbs.
In general I advocate for charitable activity to be directed towards the most effective causes. We spent a few hundred dollars in shipping costs and several hours of labor on this, and in terms of global causes, sending clothes to Ukrainian refugees is definitely not the most effective way to spend time and money. Still, we felt personally called to do this because of my girlfriend’s family connection, and I think we otherwise would not have done nearly as much.