Common Man for Ukraine is anything but common
August 25, 2023 | By Gwenna PetersWaterbury Rotary has a special program planned for its meeting on Tuesday morning, Aug. 29, at the Main Street fire station from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m.
Ukrainian children at a summer retreat in Poland supported by Common Man for Ukraine from New Hampshire. Courtesy photo
Guests from the New Hampshire-based nonprofit Common Man for Ukraine will be visiting with a presentation about their humanitarian work over the past year and a half.
Speakers Susan Mathison and Steve Rand from Plymouth, New Hampshire, will be in Waterbury to talk about their half-dozen trips to Ukraine over the past year. Waterbury community members are invited to hear their stories that will touch your heart.
Common Man for Ukraine began in March 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. It soon grew into a nonprofit alliance of donors and volunteers working with Rotary Clubs in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and Zamosc, Poland, to provide basic humanitarian aid to refugee orphans and children in Poland and Ukraine.
“We are ‘common men’ working to help our neighbors who face a needless war in Ukraine,” the group states on its website. The operation is a separate nonprofit organization within the Plymouth Rotary Foundation (a 501(c)3 nonprofit).
How it began
A March 2023 article in Business NH Magazine explains: “Two NH couples felt compelled to directly help the victims of this war. Alex Ray, owner of the Common Man Family [of restaurants] in Ashland, and Lisa Mure, who works as a public health consultant, and their friends Steve Rand, president of Rand’s Hardware in Plymouth, and Susan Mathison, chief gardener at Rogue River Dahlias, decided to launch a massive fundraising campaign in the Granite State to deliver humanitarian aid to refugee orphans and children with parents in Poland and Ukraine.”
Mathison said she and her restauranteur friend Alex Ray were having coffee after Russia invaded Ukraine. “We looked at each other after the war started and just said we have to do something,” Mathison recalled. “Alex is an out-of-the-box thinker. He is a genius. He’s crazy. Alex said the only way we’re going to know how to help is if we go there and find out how to help.”
According to the Business NH report, Ray had previous experience with humanitarian relief work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and after natural disasters in Honduras and Haiti. He and Rand are members of the Plymouth New Hampshire Rotary Club and they got to work contacting a Rotary district governor in Poland. They included Mathison and Mure in the conversation as they continued to discuss how they could make a difference.
They ultimately decided they needed to travel to Poland and Ukraine to learn more.
Ray’s disaster aid experience included working with World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit humanitarian organization founded over a decade ago by now world-famous Chef José Andrés with a mission to bring food to war and disaster zones around the globe.
None of the New Hampshire friends had direct experience in the realm of humanitarian aid. They said World Central Kitchen contacts told them, “We love you Alex and you have been a great help in the past, but we need people who speak Ukrainian and Polish.”
They headed off to Poland to meet Piotr Jankowski, the Rotarian district governor, determined to get involved.
Mathison described getting to Ukraine. With assistance from military contacts, she said they traveled into a war zone where they met children who had been sent to safe houses for their protection. She told of watching mothers holding little hands and putting their children on trains to send them to safety.
A self-described soccer mom, Mathison raised two boys on her own after she was widowed while her children were young.
She said she immediately connected with the children, recognizing that their biggest needs were basic: there was little central heat after Putin’s army destroyed the electrical grid, so they needed generators; children had flashlights but limited batteries, so they could benefit from solar lanterns. They needed winter coats, sleeping bags, and food.
The four friends returned to the U.S. and began fundraising. They soon raised $2.5 million from individual donors and the Common Man restaurant group added a $1 million matching donation.
They used the funds to purchase items in Poland so that shipping would not be an issue. Over the course of four trips to the orphanages, they supplied 750 tons of food, over 10,000 sleeping bags, hundreds of solar lanterns, and Christmas presents for 2.4 million children.
The group leaders tell of safe houses in secret locations and how they needed to build relationships with the military to gain access amidst fears that if the Russians knew the locations, they would become targets.
Preparing for life after war
Founded by the U.S. Department of State, the Ukraine Conflict Observatory is an American non-governmental organization analyzing publicly available evidence of Russian war crimes and other atrocities since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The organization produces reports with data to aid humanitarian organizations. It estimates that the Russian invasion has displaced 4.3 million Ukrainian children. More than 1.8 million children have crossed into neighboring countries as refugees and 2.5 million children are displaced within Ukraine. It also says that at least 6,000 Ukrainian children have been taken across the border into Russia.
Mathison describes how Ukrainian people she has met say they know in their bones that their people will triumph and win the war. They know the land and country belong to them and they will fight for it with heart, she said. And while there are people who supply military aid, drones, guns and weapons of war, Common Man for Ukraine has found its purpose to support the children who are going through the worst of times and continue to dream.
Mathison says she has so many stories that have touched her heart, but one in particular stood out. A 13-year-old girl communicated with her using her phone to translate. The child told her she was Jewish, she wanted to learn Hebrew, she wanted to dance, and she wanted to visit the United States.
Touched by how resilient the children were with their continued hopes and dreams, Mathison invited the girl to visit her in New Hampshire when the war is over. She said she hoped to be able to help with counseling for the children who said they didn’t know if their homes had been bombed or whether their grandparents would be alive when they might return. Mathison said her hope for them is to have a healthy future for for their dreams to continue.
Ukrainian children wear Common Man for Ukraine hats as they enjoy a meal at a summer retreat in Poland, away from their war-torn hometowns. Courtesy photo
To that end, this summer Common Man for Ukraine has helped fund summer camps in Poland with activities and counseling for Ukrainian children affected by war. Children who have lost at least one parent to the war have gotten to spend three weeks at a traditional summer camp in nature with typical activities such as swimming, volleyball, arts and crafts, and roasting marshmallows over a fire. The experience has offered a safe place away from war to just be kids and with trauma counselors available to the children.
Mathison and her Common Man for Ukraine leaders just this week returned from their latest trip. Mathison in an interview with WBZ Boston TV on Friday talked about working with Ukrainian children at the summer camps in Poland. She also said the group is looking ahead at needs they hope to continue to meet with winter approaching.
Common Man for Ukraine’s Facebook page shared photos on Thursday from its members who just returned from Ukraine and the children’s summer retreat in Poland. For the children who spent two and a half weeks at the camp, it says, “going home means a return to a war zone, the sound of air raid sirens, and the site of Russian bombings. But now, going home also means having additional tools to cope with this reality. Going home, for these children of war, now includes a having network of peers to lean on, all of whom are experiencing their same loss and circumstance…
“For us, going home means a mix of emotions: Pride. Relief. Guilt. Hope. Resolve. Among so many more. Every time we return from a humanitarian aid trip to the region, we return both satisfied and heartbroken. Proud to have helped so many kids. Devastated that we couldn't help more.”
Asked what else people should know ahead of her visit to Waterbury, Mathison offered her assessment of the volunteer mission she helped create.
“I just want people to understand how miraculous we are as humans so that we can rise to an occasion and open our hearts,” she said. “It’s like the best of times and the worst of times – like war is the worst. You think of what the Russians are doing to the innocent Ukrainian citizens. It's the worst of humanity. We also have the best of humanity – volunteers who are putting their lives on the line to deliver food, people who can barely afford to make a donation that sends us $5 in an envelope. It’s the best of humanity. And in my lifetime, it will be on my deathbed one of the things I reflect on where I made a difference.”
Find out more
Common Man for Ukraine says that $44 per month can feed one child in a safe house. The group’s goal is to raise an additional $10 million to continue their support for another year.
More information including news accounts of the group’s work and details on donating are online at commonmanforukraine.org.
Hear Mathison and Rand’s presentation Tuesday morning at the Waterbury Rotary Club’s meeting at the Main Street fire station, 7:30-8:30 a.m. ORCA Media is to record the event and post the video online afterward at orcamedia.net. Mathison and Rand also are scheduled to discuss their program on WDEV’s Vermont Viewpoint program Tuesday morning. It airs at 9-11 a.m.
Duxbury resident Gwenna Peters is a Rotarian, past president of Waterbury Rotary, and proud of the work Rotary does in the world.