WARSAW, Poland – They are not Ukrainian. They don’t have family in Ukraine or Russia. Their only connection to the war is a human one.
A couple from Texas and their friend in California saw the war unfolding and couldn’t sit back and watch.
By the fifth day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, bags were packed and flights were booked.
AJ Forsythe and Summer Vaughn left Austin, and Max Rantz-McDonald left Los Angeles with one-way tickets to Poland.
“We spent 3 days driving down the Ukraine-Poland border. There were hundreds of mothers with their children walking across the border, walking literally miles because their cars died waiting in line. I cried,” Forsythe said.
They quickly realized the problem was logistics, so they combined their business, nonprofit and social media backgrounds, set up a makeshift office in Warsaw, and got to work.
“We’re now close with the leaders of all six checkpoints and they text us and say, ‘We need X, Y, and Z,’” Forsythe explained.
“We jumped on social media and looked for donations and that grew into something,” Rantz-McDonald said.
They established an organization called Team Ukraine Love and created a website connected to a GoFundMe account.
In 2015, Rantz-McDonald did the same thing by responding to a devastating earthquake in Nepal, where he was one of the first international first responders.
He credits the success with what he calls “radical transparency” through social media, which has been key in Poland and Ukraine as well.
“You donate your money to us now, you trust us, you see us using that money. We find out exactly what people need, we’ll buy it and get it into their hands in a 48-hour window. We were amazed with how much people resonated with that,” Rantz-McDonald said.
Pictures and videos flood their social media pages daily, prompting thousands of donations that now total around $600,000.
It caught the attention of a social media team from YesTheory.
“They have about 10 million followers total. When they post something like, ‘Hey we have a need for bedsheets.’ Then someone from Denmark who follows YesTheory will be like, ‘I can bring 100 bed sheets tomorrow,’ and they’ll drive hours to deliver them,” Forsythe said.
“People from Berlin, from here in Warsaw, from Ireland, Sweden, it’s a very diverse group, Turkey,” Vaughn said.
Forsythe summed it up.
“We can basically crowdsource supplies all across Europe, centralize it in Poland, put it on trucks at a warehouse we have, and then ship it to the people who need it most,” he said.
Some shipments are huge, lifesaving donations like the 100 generators they collected and sent into Ukraine with trusted partners.
“We ordered about $100,000 of medical supplies today. Hemostatic bandages, compression bandages, tourniquets, things that we’re going to ship into Ukraine with our trusted partners and they’re going to save lives in the next two to three days,” Forsythe said.
However, their smallest deliveries have been just as impactful.
“This amazing woman who was leading the volunteer group, her first request was for these candy lollipops for the kids. We bought a whole bucket, as many as we could. We went to all these stores and the kids were just ecstatic,” Vaughn said.
“The refugees see their kids smiling for the first time in a while,” Forsythe added. “Most of them have been waiting at the refugee checkpoints in Ukraine for up to three days.”
They’re also coordinating with a huge grocery store chain that has donated stacks upon stacks of gift cards.
“They don’t have to feel like refugees taking handouts. They can go in and buy what they want,” Forsythe said.
The future of Team Ukraine Love remains up in the air, depending entirely on how long the war continues and how desperate the refugee crisis goes.
“It’s very hard to leave. Yes, we do have our lives back home that we are choosing to leave behind right now, because the need is for us to be here,” Rantz-McDonald said.
They say their strong connection to the cause will keep them there at least another couple weeks, and then they’ll reassess.
Anyone who wants to donate or learn more, can visit the Team Ukraine Love website.
They say the success so far may propel them to start a fast-response nonprofit as soon as they get back to the states, which would create an outline of the process to start similar grassroots operations during future emergencies around the world.
The team has seen unmeasurable pain, heartbreak, and sorrow; however, they’ve also seen so much kindness, love, and hope.
“Just the inspiration we’ve seen in the Polish people,” Vauhgn said. “Them coming together and helping, putting all their resources to transport refugees across the border into Poland, they have convoys going, they have supplies, they have more than enough volunteers.”
Forsythe said the experience has renewed his faith in humanity.
“This is the first time that Republican and Democrats don’t matter, religious beliefs don’t matter, locations that you live in don’t matter,” he said.
“It’s a reminder to all of us that we are one human entity,” Rantz-McDonald said.