WARSAW, Poland — Twenty-five-year-old Eric Matherly, from Danville, was teaching in Ukraine months ago.

He was inside a classroom working as an English teaching assistant with the American Fulbright program.

Eric Matherly teaches a class in Kherson, Ukraine. (Eric Matherly)

Matherly provided a photo of him teaching in Kherson, Ukraine, where he was stationed north of Crimea. 

“Finally getting into Ukraine, finally getting a chance to work with the students and get to start building a community, was a really powerful moment,” Matherly said. “It was wonderful to start engaging with all of these incredibly kind, intellectual Ukrainian people that were curious about the U.S.”

About a month ago, Matherly was evacuated from Kherson, Ukraine to Warsaw, Poland.

He kept teaching his students virtually until Russia invaded Ukraine.

“The night that it was happening, I was watching Polish TV. I was watching US TV on my laptop as well,” Matherly said. “I remember I was up all night until 5 a.m. when he made the official announcement they were going in and within minutes, the bombs were falling all over Ukraine.” 

Millions of people have since left Ukraine. Many people walked for miles in the cold as they try to escape war.

Matherly knows people who left, or who spent hours at border crossings—and some who stayed behind.

“In terms of processing it, it’s just been: How can I help?” Matherly explained. “How can not only I help, but how can people here in Warsaw, people back in the United States, how can we get Ukraine help? Because that’s the most important thing right now. So many Ukrainians are still in Ukraine.”

Matherly said in Poland, there is a massive mobilization of resources to help incoming Ukrainian refugees and people displaced from Ukraine—including donations.

“In terms of what we’ve been doing, we’ve been sorting through those donations, preparing those donations, so that way we can get them to different refugees who are being put in centers here that have been set up on short notice,” Matherly said. “There are people who are driving to the border to pick up people that don’t have a ride to other places within Poland.”

Matherly said he and others show strong solidarity with Ukraine.

He said they’re in the streets to show support and collectively ask governments to send humanitarian aid and not hesitate on further sanctions against Russia.

The White House has asked Congress for $10 Billion in aid for Ukraine. 

“The biggest things are donating money to organizations that can help Ukrainians directly,” Matherly explained.

Matherly will stay in Poland to help as long as he can. He said his allotted 90 days in the European Union will be up at the end of April.