in Chatsworth, Grey Highlands, Southgate, West Grey
April 07, 2022
BY JOHN BUTLER FOR SOUTHGREY.CA — A convergence of personal compassion and a culture of caring within Grey Highlands businesses have come together to help people uprooted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Kevin Land, a local playwright and proprietor of the bookstore Speaking Volumes Books and Audio in Flesherton, is no stranger to helping refugees. He and his wife Mary-Jo helped an Afghan interpreter for Canadian educators in Afghanistan to settle in Canada, and they remain active in Afghan settlement efforts. Kevin decided he had to do something local about the Ukrainian travesty half a world away. He started by donating half the proceeds from his bookstore sales in March to the Canadian Red Cross’s Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal, a charitable fund that describes it mandate as: “preparedness and response efforts due to heightened tensions in Ukraine. The support could include preparedness, immediate and ongoing relief efforts, long-term recovery, resiliency, and other critical humanitarian activities as needs arise, both in Ukraine and surrounding countries, including supporting populations displaced.”
Kevin felt the Red Cross was a fitting charity to receive the money because it is a well-known and highly respected organization with roots in Canada.
As a student of local history. Kevin knew that business communities across Grey County had been responding to the needs of vulnerable people at home and overseas for 150 years, and that other businesses would share his concern for the people of Ukraine.
And he was right. A phone call from Kevin to Karen Cox, President of the Grey Highlands Chamber of Commerce, to gauge the organizations interest in helping raise funds met with a warm response, and the Chamber’s board endorsed its participation in a campaign that Kevin dubbed “Grey County Cares”. This initiative involves businesses in Grey Highlands pledging to donate a portion of sales revenue for the month of April, or a fixed sum of their choosing, to the Red Cross Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal. Each business donor receives a tax receipt for its donation from the Red Cross. And as part of this initiative Kevin Land and Stewart Halliday (a local entrepreneur and former Grey Highlands Deputy Mayor and Grey County Warden) are approaching larger employers in Grey County to encourage them to match these donations for a greater impact. Their efforts have already garnered a pledge of $16,000 from one donor who wishes to remain anonymous.
A striking and increasingly widespread visible symbol of this initiative is a poster that businesses in Grey Highlands display in their windows announcing their participation in the program.
The poster, designed at the request of the Chamber, is the work of Eugenia artist and studio owner Barbara Pearn. Like Kevin Land, Barbara had already raised money for Ukrainian relief, even before the Chamber’s project broadened the fundraising. Moved by television news images of tearful Ukrainian refugees leaving their homeland for an uncertain future, Barbara donated a hefty portion of her March art sales to the Red Cross Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal.
Kevin Land and others are already planning a next phase, to start in May, to help people who have fled Ukraine and are settling in Grey County, with all the challenges that entails. In this phase, businesses in Grey Highlands and beyond will sell lapel pins to their customers, with the proceedings being sent to a charity to help our newest neighbours from the Ukraine to cope with the resettlement expenses of people who fled their homeland with little more than the clothes they are wearing and a suitcase. Once again, Barbara Pearn’s design skills will generate the art work and messaging on these pins, and they will be produced by ColourPix, a Eugenia-based firm owned by her and her husband, Ron Barnett. Kevin Land says he hopes the pins will serve two purposes in addition to fundraising: they will help mobilize local people to remain involved in aiding Ukrainian refugees, and they will be a way for people to say to newly arriving refugees, “We care about you.”
This initiative will be augmented by seventeen collection boxes located in local businesses, allowing customers and visitors to drop in a toonie or two (or more). The logo and a statement of support from the Rotary Club of Markdale (serving all of Grey Highlands) will be prominently displayed on these boxes to support the campaign, and Rotary Club member Steward Halliday will distribute the boxes to participating businesses. People who want to place a donation in a box via a cheque can make the cheque out to the Rotary Club of Markdale, and they will receive a receipt for their charitable contribution.
The Rotary Club will also be cooking and selling barbecue delectables at the Grey Highlands Home and Garden Show at the Flesherton Kinplex on April 30 and May 1, and all proceeds of the barbecue will, like the contents of the collection boxes, be devoted to helping Ukrainian families who settle in Grey Highlands.
It appears that at least five Ukrainian refugee families will soon become part of Grey County's fabric, and more newcomers are expected. The earliest arrivals will likely be the six members of the Sirenko family – Alina, her husband John, their young daughters Rebekka (Becky) and Kassiia, and Alina’s sister Yana and brother Danyil. The family is from Bucha, the town near Kyiv that has allegedly experienced horrendous war crimes.
Grey Highlands resident Susanne von Toerne decided a few weeks ago to do something personal about the Ukrainian crisis. She and friends from her homeland, Germany, made two trips to rescue Ukrainians from refugee camps in Poland and drove them to a safe haven and welcome in Germany. The first mission was to rescue the Sirenkos, whose plight had been drawn to Susanne’s attention through a manager at Rural Net, the locally based internet company owned and operated by Susanne’s husband Heiner Philipp, who is himself a passionate advocate for Ukrainian relief efforts (and a major donor to this cause).
Susanne and Heiner hope to welcome the Sirenkos into their home near Flesherton in the first week in May. The family fled Bucha with almost nothing. Janine Mosley from Singhampton has begun a gofund.me campaign for the Sirenko family, with an initial goal of $25,000. Said Heiner Philipp in a recent Rural Net newsletter, “They will need new clothes, food, transport and everything else to live a normal life. While they are welcome to live with us for as long as they wish, I can imagine they will soon want to have their own space. They will need to obtain English language training and begin a new career here in Canada.”
While Ukrainian refugees need help, they are not helpless. Even while awaiting resettlement in Canada, Alina has worked with her hosts in Germany to return to the border with donated supplies for refugees and to bring even more of her fellow Ukrainians to safety in Germany. Said Alina, “I cannot just sit and wait for the visa to come through. I have to do something to help my people.”
The link to the gofund.me campaign for the Sirenkos is https://gofund.me/a39bfd86.
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