MERIDIAN, Idaho — Idaho Humanitarian Aid is hosting a donation drop-off Monday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. to support Ukrainians in need. Donations of non-perishable foods and personal hygiene products are highly encouraged.
- The drive is being held at the Full Gospel Slavic Church in Meridian.
- You can learn more about what you can donate and Idaho Humanitarian Aid here.
- If you miss the donation drop-off on Monday, donations will still be accepted throughout the week.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
"If you see this you know it's coming from Idaho," says Leo Martsinyuk, the Lead Coordinator for Idaho Humanitarian Aid, a local organization collecting aid to send to Ukraine.
"From this facility and including, we had one more drive in Twin Falls, we shipped roughly 12 containers from Idaho," says Martsinyuk.
This is the fifth drive they've held in Meridian, which allows them to send boxes full of supplies to people in need. Those boxes are marked with this sticker to show that they came from Idaho.
"It's going to the people who have no means to support themselves anymore. Some of them don't have housing, some of them lost everything," says Martsinyuk.
"I had the opportunity to give supplies out," says Pavel Yaroshchuk, the Packaging Coordinator for Idaho Humanitarian Aid.
He is one of the coordinators in charge of making sure everything is packaged well and survives the trip to Ukraine. He made the trip himself to offer aid in-person.
"When you compare your life here, seeing that we go to bed and we don't have to worry about anything. The people there, they don't know where they're going to get their food the next day, if they're gonna wake up that kind of stuff. So it's sensitive," added Yaroshchuk.
He tells me supplies packed in Idaho help people that are often overlooked in Ukraine.
"The supplies that we send, I like to say it reaches the smaller people. People like us that don't have anywhere to go. Nobody really thinks about the smaller people in the small villages and that's where our organization succeeds," says Yaroshchuk.
"We just want to involve the community and invite them to come back in and help us just like the way they did right when the war broke out," says Nataliya Barbin, a Coordinator for Idaho Humanitarian Aid.
