COUPLAND – Coupland’s Debrah Candelas and partner Jeff Teasdale had an experience that very few people have had. During the Easter season, they volunteered to help the people in Ukraine.
Candelas is a nurse, and Teasdale is a retired paramedic, so they were able to provide more help that most people could.
Candelas had been in contact with a group that was organizing people to deploy to a refugee camp just inside the Poland-Ukraine border.
“We arrived at the camp and found the group we were looking for. They had recently been blessed with additional help and did not really have anything for us to do, so we found the Polish National Guard medical tent, and volunteered our services,” she said. “We would divide our time between helping displaced people with immediate medical needs, such as high blood pressure because they had to leave home without their medication, dehydration, hypothermia from the nights spent outside during their journey, children with complaints such as upset stomachs and fevers.”
At that time of year, the temperature was still falling below freezing overnight, and some of these people had traveled for a week or more with little more than the clothes on their backs.
“When we weren’t providing medical attention, we would walk across the border with wheelchairs to assist the elderly and disabled navigate the long lines and get them to the camp faster. Sometimes, people were waiting outside for up to 10 hours to cross on foot. We would walk across several times a day. We also helped collect requested supplies and walk them across the border to a car on the other side waiting to take them to the front line in the east of Ukraine.”
“After a week or so, we were approached about a mission going in to take supplies and to evacuate disabled children from a rehabilitation center in Chernihiv, a small city about 30 miles from the Belarus border that had spent 35 days under siege. It was in desperate need of supplies. For the trip, we took a retired metro bus loaded with supplies, an armored personnel carrier loaded with cans of fuel and a water purification system, and a passenger van. After several delays, we arrived at the border at 5 a.m. and spent the next 15 hours in line. After finally clearing all of the vehicles and people through the border, we started the journey of 1,000 miles.”
After traveling across Ukraine and back, Candelas and Teasdale arrived back in Poland and then home.
Once they were home, Candelas says, “We both felt the need to continue to assist the Ukrainians in their struggle. We have sent care packages to the center. We have funded a trip for a fellow humanitarian to take supplies in and bring people out, and we are hosting a mother and her 10-year-old son. I would sponsor them all if I could. I can help navigate the process for anyone else who might be willing to open their home to sponsor a person or a family. The refugees are eligible for assistance such as SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, etc.”
Candelas can be reached at [email protected].
Candelas concludes, “On July 4th as we celebrated our freedom with family and friends, I was reminded of my week in Ukraine, and I realized how much sweeter freedom tastes this year and how easy it is to take it for granted.”
