Loading

A Community Built by Strangers Service Learning with Ukrainian Refugees in Kraków

Marko Gural 25 is a political science major with a minor in European studies. Christian McKernan ’23 is a finance major in the Mendoza College of Business with minors in European studies and constitutional studies. In early summer 2022, motivated by a desire to help refugees from the war in Ukraine, they undertook service learning, with the support of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, at the Office for Refugee Support at University Ignatianum in Kraków and a local refugee center operated by Centrum Wielokulturowe w Krakowie.

In April 2022, during a conversation with their friend Max Chuma ’22, Marko Gural ’25 and Christian McKernan ’23 were inspired to undertake service learning in Europe, helping with the herculean task of receiving refugees from the war in Ukraine. Max, Marko, and Christian are all members of the Ukrainian Society of Notre Dame and minors in European studies. During a spring break seminar in Berlin, sponsored by the Nanovic Institute, Max had spent a day helping with the volunteer effort to receive Ukrainian refugees arriving at the city’s central train station. Upon his return, he related his experience to his friends in the Ukrainian Society. Marko and Christian decided that during their upcoming summer break, they would follow Max’s example.

For Marko and Christian, Russia’s invasion of the country of their heritage, which expanded dramatically on February 24, 2022, was both heart-breaking and transformative. “I’ve been a Ukrainian longer than I’ve been an American,” explains Marko. Born in New York City to parents who emigrated from western Ukraine in the 1990s, he spoke only Ukrainian until he entered preschool. Of his childhood, Marko recalls: “every inch of culture and language I experienced in my youth came from that Eastern European nation.” Christian is the grandchild of Ukrainian refugees: as young children, his maternal grandparents fled their homeland during the Soviet offensive of World War II. In August 2021, the pair were randomly assigned to nearby rooms in Notre Dame’s Stanford Hall and formed a friendship based on their shared experience of growing up Ukrainian in the U.S., reminiscing about attending Ukrainian school on Saturdays and Ukrainian Catholic mass on Sundays. The events of late February only strengthened their bond as they sat together through late nights and early mornings monitoring breaking news from the war. For both, the impulse to do something, to help their homeland and fellow Ukrainians was impossible to ignore.

Marko and Christian’s friends in the Ukrainian Society of Notre Dame felt the same impulse for action. The society was formed in the fall of 2020, led by Ukrainian American students who wanted to establish a cultural club celebrating Ukrainian presence on the Notre Dame campus. Since February 2022, the Ukrainian Society has organized prayer vigils outside Notre Dame’s Main Building and Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, celebrated a Byzantine liturgy in the university’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart, facilitated zoom meetings between students from Notre Dame and the Ukrainian Catholic University, and collaborated with the Nanovic Institute to hold a celebration marking Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24. Crucially, the group has fundraised thousands of dollars for refugee relief, contributing to the work of organizations such as Caritas Ukraine and Catholic Relief Services. The group has also embraced as their own the ten Ukrainian women attending Notre Dame during the Fall ’22 semester as exchange students.

Clockwise from top left: Ukrainian Society of Notre Dame prayer vigil outside Notre Dame's main building on February 28 (photo by Barbara Johnston); a celebration of Ukrainian Independence Day, August 24, 2022; Marko and Christian with Max Chuma and his sister Maryna (President of the USND) at the Byzantine liturgy in Notre Dame's Basilica of the Sacred Heart on February 28 (photo by Barbara Johnston).

After their conversation with Max about his experience volunteering with refugees in Berlin, Marko and Christian met with Anna Dolezal, Nanovic’s student programs associate manager, to discuss applying for funding from the Nanovic Institute to travel to wherever in Central and Eastern there might be the most need. They then worked with Taras Dobko, senior vice rector of UCU and visiting scholar at the Nanovic Institute, who helped them secure an invitation to work with the Office of Refugee Support at the University Ignatianum in Kraków, Poland. Within the first six weeks following the invasion, Kraków had received 150,000 Ukrainian refugees, a figure that increased the city’s population by 20%. By early June, around the time of Marko and Christian’s arrival, 50,000 remained in the city.

Christian recalls witnessing the Polish outpouring of support for Ukraine immediately upon their arrival in Kraków. Sitting on the runway in their own inbound plane, they saw another labeled “Україна” (Ukraine) with a tryzub, the gold trident on a blue shield that is Ukraine’s coat of arms. Then on their journey from the city’s main train station, they saw a group of large tents offering food and shelter to the refugees and billboards that read “Слава Україні,” meaning “Glory to Ukraine.” For Christian, “this initial impression only reinforced our perception of Poland’s commitment to Ukrainian refugees.”

Nightly demonstration in support of Ukraine on Kraków's main square, Rynek Główny.

Food and shelter tents for Ukrainian refugees located just outside Kraków Główny, the city's main train station.

Marko and Christian engaged in a number of volunteer activities; some of these were long-term initiatives designed to help refugees adapt to and plan for their new reality, while others aimed at taking care of their more immediate and urgent needs.

In the mornings, the pair helped with forward-planning initiatives run by University Ignatianum’s Office of Refugee Support. They volunteered at the university’s new Education Hub, a school that provides foreign language training — in English, Polish, or French, for example — to Ukrainian teenagers. Marko and Christian conversed with Polish and Ukrainian volunteer teachers, helping them to improve their English skills in preparation for working with young people. Marko was deeply moved by this “community built by strangers and volunteers who accepted a different nationality into their country with open arms.” The students were also able to attend the grand opening of BASIS, a school in Kyiv that had relocated to Kraków and now provides educational projects for Ukrainians living temporarily in the city and other residents, where they were able to chat with the children and their families.

Left to right: Marko and Christian pictured outside University Ignatianum; Marko talking to a young Ukrainian boy at the grand opening of the BASIS school.

Although their work with the Office of Refugee Support felt extremely valuable, Marko explains that the hours they spent each afternoon at a food and storage pantry in the city center “targeted the essence of our motivation to travel to western Poland.” At this pantry, operated by Centrum Wielokulturowe w Krakowie, volunteers worked to meet the immediate and basic needs of a long line of refugees that sometimes stretched to the end of the block. Again using their dual language skills, Marko and Christian helped newcomers register and find what they needed from among the available food, drinks, and other essentials, such as toiletries, diapers, and washing detergent. Marko recalls his daily encounters with the other volunteers, who he describes as “the greatest humans imaginable, working solely to help others in that pantry.”

Left to right: Christian checks the passport of a client registering at the food and storage pantry operated by Centrum Wielokulturowe w Krakowie; Christian and Marko outside the pantry after their last shift.

“Every day, we’d see the same group of four or five older Ukrainian women, some of them refugees themselves, loading soap onto shelves and dishing out bags of kasha, or buckwheat. Every day, they always smiled at us. Every day we saw the same group of ex-pats, from Australia, Montreal, Los Angeles, Portland, and the like. Some dropped everything to move to Krakow when Russia invaded, and with no Ukrainian or Polish connections, decided what their future work would be.” - Marko Gural ’25

A long line outside the food and storage pantry operated by Centrum Wielokulturowe w Krakowie.

At the close of a service learning experience that had started with a conversation at Notre Dame, Marko and Christian’s most abiding memories revolved around conversations they had in Kraków with volunteers and refugees, children and seniors, such as a refugee-volunteer from Odesa who had lost her home, an apartment she had worked for years to purchase, and a traumatized eight-year-old boy from Mariupol, one of Ukraine’s most heavily besieged cities.

As upsetting and difficult as these encounters were, for Marko and Christian, meeting and befriending these individuals made them optimistic for Ukraine’s future and the support it will continue to receive from friends across the globe. The experience proved to them that the Ukrainian people are not alone. As Christian explains, “now I can say for sure: we have friends everywhere.”

The deadline for the 2023 Serving (In) Europe program is November 15, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. Students interested in this program can find more information on the Nanovic Institute website.

Produced by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Author: Gráinne McEvoy

Photos by: Marko Gural, Barbara Johnston, Christian McKernan, and Grant Osborn.

Created By
Grainne McEvoy
Appreciate