NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. — With the ongoing war in Ukraine, basic supplies such as food, clothes, or medical resources there are depleting quickly. 

What You Need To Know

  • A team of volunteers pack boxes of supplies that have been collected for the last several weeks

  • The supplies are now on route to Ukraine

  • Christian Mission Ebenezer is sending 100,000 pounds of supplies

  • One volunteer helped pack supplies after just returning from Ukraine earlier this year

 

It’s the reason behind a central Kentucky nonprofit’s mission to send aid and now they are racing to box the supplies.

“We are packing medical supplies that have been donated,” said Olga Luchenko, a volunteer.

The minute Luchenko arrived, she began sorting.

“To use up less boxes and maximize the space,” Luchenko said. 

They’re working to squeeze every cubic foot, so more pounds can fit.

“We were there January 17th to February 3rd,” Luchenko said.

She’s volunteering her time to help send supplies to Ukraine, after just returning from her native country earlier this year.

“It makes it even tougher when you hear it firsthand from family and friends,” Luchenko said. “How real in reality, how much of a more difficult and horrific, horrific picture and what they really see is like.”

For the last four weeks, organizers with Christian Mission Ebenezer have collected donations from Nicholasville and the greater Lexington areas.

“Just having recently been there, and it all happening so quick is just it’s devastating,” Luchenko said. “And the kids (have) just recently been there seeing what it was in what it is now. It’s heartbreaking.”

CME said these supplies will go directly to refugees in Ukraine hiding in basements or taking shelter.

“We get to continue to go school and work, and they have seen the pictures. They have talking to their grandma and cousin before he left the country and know what’s going on there. It’s just, it’s almost unreal, unreal, especially having been there so recently,” Luchenko said.

Hoping these packages of supplies will help families survive at least two weeks.

“To be able to serve and then have this be a blessing to those in Ukraine, whoever it gets to,” Luchenko said.

CME said 100,000 pounds of supplies are on route either being shipped or flown to Ukraine.

It could take about two weeks to arrive in Europe. They also said they have 30 sites in Ukraine and 95 missionaries who help distribute the supplies.

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