How to Volunteer
Many of you coming to this website are interested in helping either volunteer or providing some sort of donations. Thank you for this! After having been "out on the field" in Poland/Ukraine and volunteering there, I have a pretty general idea of the areas where you can best dedicate your time, either remotely or in-person.
Remote Help
First off, thank you for your interest! Remote help is much needed and welcomed, as we only need a few people on the grounds operating in Poland.
It's okay if you don't have a particular skill set below, just as long as you are interested is already enough! Specifically, here are several positions that we currently need help with:
General Volunteer
Ambassadors for fund raising
Social media outreach
Translator (between English, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian)
Coding instructor (for longer term)
Tech Recruiters
Admin/Organizer
Legal assistance
Immigration experience
Software Engineer
Graphics design
QA
Of course, this is by no means a comprehensive list. If you have time, or a particular interest/skill, please reach out to me!!! We need all the help we can mobilize.
In-Person help
If you're interested in helping in person in Poland, the good news is that Americans can stay 90 days in Schengen territory without even needing a visa! If you need help with a visa, I can help you with this as well.
Perhaps my journey to Poland/Ukraine inspired you to fly to Poland in person. In that case, please join our team! We still need people at the stations/camp volunteering! There's a many things we need help with here on the field, primarily:
Translation - especially if you speak Ukrainian, Russian, or Polish
Transportation - we have a supply chain going from NYC to Poland/Ukraine, but we would like to expand this
Stationing the camps - we just need volunteers at our camp 24/7 because trains can come in the middle of the night. Just having a presence there is extremely crucial
Networking - there are currently a lot of decentralized organizations, and some things can be much more efficient if our resources are shared
Independently Volunteering
If you are interested in volunteering by yourself and are planning a trip, or even need assistance with a trip here, please reach out to me directly! I have learned many lessons from my travels that might be helpful.
When I first started my journey, there are no good information on how to get there, and who to contact for volunteering opportunities. You might think that going to Red Cross is your best bet, but I have friends who did this and they just packed boxes in a dark warehouse all day. While it's important to do that, your time/money/energy when you're currently in America can probably be better placed elsewhere than to travel here just to pack boxes. Also, there are more and more local volunteers who are coming in to help. I highly recommend getting in touch with me first so you don't accidentally come here just to pack boxes in a basement.
That out of the way, here are the areas that you can go to volunteer at:
You can just show up at Warszawa Centralna, walk to the center pillar (of the three) and ask to volunteer. However, last time (as of late March), they are only letting Polish citizens sign up for volunteering here. You can return to volunteer if your name is already registered in their system. Things you might do:
serve food
help with directions
assist with mother/enfant special needs (female volunteers only)
housing/transportation
The West station is much smaller than the central station, but with a similar setup. I only volunteered here for a little bit, but you can help guide with directions here.
You can also show up at the train station in Przemyśl and it's very similar to Warsaw Central, as described above. The volunteer registration desk is right past the entrance, to the right. Look for the volunteers in orange vests.
It is not recommended to just show up at the border to volunteer. Most of the organizations here send their own volunteers, so you will not really be able to just randomly join a station. That said, the situation is constantly changing, so it might be different now.
If it is still like before, then there needs to be a lot more organizational type of help here. For example, while people have yellow vests for marking volunteers, they do not have language pins like at the train stations. Language pins help easily identify if you speak Ukrainian or not, this is really important for both you and the refugee. There's also very little cross-collaboration between the tents, and so often times efforts are duplicated, or there is suddenly insufficient coverage of certain items.