Peoria resident Mark Rein fondly recalls his connection with the people of Ukraine he encountered on his first humanitarian mission to the war-stricken country a year ago.
“I can’t even imagine personally being in their situations and trying to fight through or work through some of the issues that they deal with,” said Rein. “And yet, what’s remarkable about them, it’s their tenacity given their circumstance and just how strong-willed they are.”
Rein will lead another group of volunteers from the Peoria area and elsewhere departing Friday on a second mission to the city of Ternopil in west-central Ukraine – distanced from the front lines of the ongoing war with Russia.
“I always try to educate people by letting them know that where we are located by comparison to the war zone is literally the distance between Chicago and Atlanta,” he said. “It’s a fascinating community with about 200,000 people, so it’s very similar to Peoria in a way; they’re in the middle of a large agricultural region there.
“But they are definitely indirectly impacted by the war, due to the fact that brothers, husbands, cousins, uncles, etc., are off serving in the war. The impact on the community is rather difficult because there’s a lot of people who have lost their husbands, children who have lost their parents. A lot of homeless issues because of the destruction in the east, and so everybody’s kind of migrated to the west.”
Rein says the 15-member mission will include teams of dentists, construction workers and mental health professionals with a goal of providing long-lasting assistance.
“It’s just regular people from the community helping out regular people in their communities that, again, due to unfortunate situations beyond their control, are dealing with some very, very challenging circumstances,” he said. “So our goal is to come in and provide assistance, be of help.”
Rein said the people he met in Ternopil last year greatly appreciate the help from American volunteers.
“I can’t begin to tell you how many times we were stopped and they thanked for us being there. But then the second question was usually, ‘Why? You know we’re at war, right? Why are you here?’ And of course, you know we’re there to help out in any way that we possibly can,” said Rein.
“One of the lessons that I learned – maybe the hard way – was our lead counterpart when we were over there, I told him, ‘I am so sorry that you were going through this. It’s just unfair.’ And he sternly corrected me, he said, ‘Don’t feel sorry for us. It’s our war, it’s our country; we don’t need pity. We do need your support; if we could do this on our own, we would. But it’s our war, and we’ll fight it.’”
Rein said the 17-day trip also has participants from Minnesota, Texas and North Carolina, and is being facilitated by the Omaha-based organization Rapid Response America.
“They go on about six mission trips per year, most of them domestic,” he said. “But once a year they do an international trip, and that has become this Ukraine trip – and now I am the trip leader on that trip.”
Rein said the construction team will participate in a groundbreaking for an orphanage, the team of dentists will assist in addressing a growing need for oral care, and the mental health experts will coach professional counterparts in Ukraine on how to help people embrace the concept of resilience.
“They’ve obviously been at war for over three years now, and we all hope that it ends sometime soon,” he said. “Even once the war is over, this is going to be generational; this is going to be for a long term,” he said. “We can kind of bring knowledge and we can bring skills there, but the whole concept is that we want to teach others to have that knowledge and those skills as well.”
