A Letter from a OurBorsch Co-Founder
When the war in Ukraine broke out, I found it difficult to focus on anything. I was distraught and overwhelmed and cried a lot. I’m a refugee from the former Soviet Union and my grandmother lived most of her life in Ukraine where she and her family fled from the Nazis in WWII. While my grandmother is no longer with us, at the start of the war, I still had some family in both Odesa and Kharkiv, who were in grave danger. Feeling powerless didn’t sit well with me, so I decided to take the sadness and anger that I was feeling and turn it into something positive. I wrote an email to my friends and colleagues, asking for help. That same day I called Helen, OurBorsch’s founder, and my friend from elementary school. When I told Helen what I was doing her response was “I feel weird asking people for money” to which I said, “if not now, then when? And if not us, then who?”
Helen and I are both refugees from the former Soviet Union and when our families settled in San Francisco in the 1990s the Jewish Family and Children’s Services organization helped us immensely. They gave us everything from pots and pans to clothes and furniture. Since those days my life has been very privileged, so using that privilege to give back felt like the only reasonable course of action. Helen and I both went off to run our individual streams of fundraising, but we also vowed to continue this work once refugees came to the US and needed our help, much like our families did in the 90s.
My fundraising began with a simple email, asking for help to fund my step-sister and her daughter who recently fled from the devastated city of Kharkiv and were making their way to Turkey. The outpour of support was incredible. I received generous donations from friends, family, and colleagues. A very generous friend who runs OneLoveMovement.org organized two separate Yoga sessions to fundraise for my cause. With one email I raised $17K in under one month. The funds that I raised are being used to pay for necessities and housing for my step-sister and her daughter, flights to the United States when their visa is granted and funds to help them get settled into their new home. Once my own stream of fundraising ended I wanted to do more for a broader demographic. I reached back out to Helen. Ironically Helen had just started to file paperwork for OurBorsch, and I quickly asked to be part of the team. There is still so much work to be done. I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish with OurBorsch, for the great people of Ukraine, and in honor of my grandmother.
