What You Can Do

I wake up at 3 am to check my phone. I’m in Boston, but it’s 10 am in Kyiv and I’m waiting for a message from a Ukrainian woman who, together with her mother and a small dog, should be crossing the border into Latvia. My job is to make sure they have crossed safely.

Certainly, as a volunteer, you know that you cannot save everyone… You simply can’t fundraise enough to provide everyone with a bulletproof vest, a tourniquet, or night vision. That means that someone will die – someone who would have lived had you fundraised some extra six hundred dollars.

 I was stunned at the visible absence of large humanitarian aid organizations that I witnessed at the border. Tents bearing the “name brand” logos of some of the world’s largest humanitarian relief groups sat empty as visibly distraught refugees walked past them without a glance.