10,000 Pounds Of Goods From Long Island Headed To Ukraine

HAUPPAUGE, NY — Roughly 10,000 pounds of clothing, non-perishable food, personal care items and household supplies are set to be shipped from Long Island to Ukraine on Friday, according to Long Island Cares, a hunger advocacy organization that was asked to oversee the logistics.

New York State Assemblyman Charles Lavine (D — Glen Cove) and Ukrainian Americans of LI teamed up to collect the goods for the people in Ukraine. As of Monday, they have collected 22 pallets of goods.

Long Island Cares will oversee the loading of the pallets onto a truck that will head from Hauppauge to a shipping company in New Jersey. The pallets will then be placed aboard a ship headed to Poland to be distributed to the Ukrainians.

Paule Pachter, CEO of Long Island Cares, said his organization has worked very closely with Lavine and members of the Ukrainian Americans of Long Island for more than six months. LI Cares made its warehouse available to store the donations from Long Islanders in support of Ukrainians who had to leave their country because of Russian attacks on their homeland.

"The logistics involved in sending aid to Ukraine have been quite complex, but we are now ready to ship 21 pallets, totaling five tons of supplies, to help our brothers and sisters in Ukraine prepare for the winter months until, hopefully, they can achieve peace or celebrate victory from Russia’s unjustified oppression,” Pachter told Patch.

Lavine will be at Long Island Cares to see the shipment off, and he will be joined by Yaroslav Boyechko, co-founder of Hope for Ukraine. Long Island Cares also expects Volodymyr Tsayalkovsky of Ukrainian Americans of LI.

“Working with the Ukrainian American community and Long Island Cares, we collected tons of needed supplies to support our brothers and sisters in Ukraine," Lavine stated. "I am especially grateful to our fellow Long Islanders who made these meaningful contributions. Slava Ukraini!"

Tsayalkovsky said the Russian-Ukrainian war has brought "unspeakable" and "unimaginable" suffering to Ukrainians.

"Over 14 million Ukrainians were forced to leave their homes, including eight million being internally displaced and six million refugees," Tsayalkovsky said. "We are trying to help those people by sending them daily-life necessities. It would not be possible to call by name everyone involved in this effort. We also wanted to let everyone know that we are enormously grateful for your generous support. We would not be able to do it without you. And we are looking forward to ending this war TOGETHER."

Fifth-grade students in the Connolly Elementary School Student Council in Glen Cove previously teamed up with Lavine to collect toothpaste, paper towels and clothes. Students also made “friendship cards” to spread messages of kindness and hope to the Ukrainian children, some of which were written in Ukrainian. These were packaged with gifts for the children like crayons, markers and colored pencils.

Twelve boxes collected from the elementary school were shipped overseas to Ukrainians.