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Hope for Older Refugees of War: A Bay Area Resident's Mission to Save Older Adults in Ukraine

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An elderly woman sits solemnly on her bed cot inside of a church office.
Olema, 57, in a church-turned-shelter, has to make the difficult choice to turn down an apartment because her multiple sclerosis would prevent her from climbing the stairs. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

Maria Galbo wandered amid the decaying walls of a Soviet-era apartment in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. She stepped into the living room and pulled open the door to the terrace. Warm, humid air poured in. The piercing call of an air raid siren invaded the room, reverberating through the entire aging structure. This was the second apartment she’d been to that morning.

A youngish white woman with short, unkempt, light pink hair sits in the backseat of a car, the knuckles of her left hand holding her chin, looking out the window with a serious look on her face.
Maria Galbo, a resident of Albany, started an organization that works to re-home older refugees from Ukraine’s dangerous eastern regions. The organization, Under a Kind Roof, visits shelters in western Ukraine to create profiles of refugees in need of permanent shelter, and then finds, negotiates and leases homes for them. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

Later, she visited a shelter where refugees from the Russian invasion to the east were staying. Disabled older adults cried as they shared their stories with her, many having spent the last six months moving from shelter to shelter, living off donated groceries and crowded into churches, gymnasiums and schools.

Galbo listened to their stories and copied their information into a spreadsheet on her laptop. She spent the next week traveling all over the city to find permanent housing for them before the looming winter swept the country.

Galbo isn’t from Ukraine. She moved to the U.S. from Russia in 2001, and has been living in the Bay Area for nine years. She traveled to Ukraine from her home in Albany, temporarily leaving behind her family and her tech job to provide relief to refugees.

Two dogs stand on the hard-packed dirt in front of a blue-green, two-story building with a peaked roof and gable. Four cars and vans are parked around the building, under a gray sky.
Two dogs roam a property for lease in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. The owner runs a car lot on the property, and the buildings are in poor condition. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

“My friend’s mom died through this ordeal. She had dementia, and she was in Bucha when they had this horrible situation,” Galbo recalled. “The doctors and nurses only took people who could walk, and those who couldn’t move remained there. By the time transportation came, they were already hungry and neglected.”

She tag-teams with her husband, Yevgeniy Sverdlik, so someone is always home to support their two children. As of December, Galbo and Sverdlik have made a combined seven trips to Ukraine to volunteer.

A group of four mostly young-looking adults stand along the wooden banister in the upstairs area of a home, with bright light coming through tall windows dressed in gauzy curtains.
Stanislav Shoupletsov (left) and Maria Galbo (right) discuss rental terms for a potential property with Elena Akopova (center left) and Anna Gnatiuk (center right). The home has water damage and mold, and the owner is boisterous and rude. Galbo and her team decide not to lease the home. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

Galbo’s first trip was back in March of 2022, right after the start of the Russian invasion, and she worked with volunteer organizations to provide financial aid to refugees fleeing across the Polish border. However, after evacuations at the border died down, Galbo realized that those in direst need were the older refugees still in the country.

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That summer, Galbo started her own organization, Under a Kind Roof. She began raising money in the Bay Area and abroad to provide financial help to neglected older adults in Ukraine.

“It was so painful for all of us to watch the elderly people suffer, those who don’t have relatives to help them,” Galbo said. “So we decided, let’s try to help.”

Galbo created a survey and distributed it among shelters in Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk. With the responses, she created a spreadsheet of refugees’ information. Then she created a priority list to match refugees with available housing. Every month or so, she travels to Ukraine and links up with a team of volunteers who work to find available housing in cities like Chernivtsi, which have high volumes of older refugees.

A woman with short, light pink hair, wearing a denim dress and holding a long, olive-colored backpack, walks toward a 10-story apartment building with a facade of white, peach, and brick.
Galbo approaches a Soviet-era apartment complex, where a unit has become available for lease. Soviet-style apartments like this one can prove difficult for older refugees with mobility issues, and leasing these types of apartments can come down to them having a reliable elevator. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

But finding housing is challenging. Accommodation is already in short supply, and the infrastructure in many Ukrainian towns suffers from decay and neglect. To protect older adults from poor living conditions, Galbo and her team personally visit available apartments. Potential homes are often disqualified for water damage, mold and even landlords with apparent substance use issues.

Still, safe shelters do appear. Galbo’s team makes sure a potential candidate is a good fit, then shows them the space and leases it for three to six months on their behalf. This can be lifesaving for older adults: An insulated shelter and a warm bed can be the difference between life and death.

A woman stands framed in a doorway, which with adjacent windows frames and the wall are in shadow, to a terrace outside an apartment building.
Galbo inspects the balcony of a Soviet-era apartment in Chernivtsi while air raid sirens cry outside. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

“Giving them a home is giving them hope,” Galbo said. “We see that they start building little homes and getting attached to the new places.”

Galbo completed her second trip under her new organization in October, and has been back in the Bay Area preparing for her next trip. The Russian and Ukrainian community in the Bay Area has been a keystone of the fundraising efforts, with volunteer bakers providing thousands of dollars worth of pastries for bake sales in San Francisco, raising over $10,000 for Under a Kind Roof.

A long room filled with makeshift beds and cots, with personal belongings scattered about.
A school hall that has been turned into a shelter for older refugees. Summer break is about to end, and these residents are being asked to relocate. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

Galbo plans to continue growing Under a Kind Roof by expanding volunteer opportunities and financial aid. With the help of her husband and her team, she is working tirelessly to continue providing support to the nearly 40 people in her program while continuing to enroll new participants as the war continues.

“I want everybody to just constantly mind that the war is still on right now, more than ever. It’s wintertime. It’s blackouts,” she said. “People have no electricity, no heat, there’s bombings, and there’s no housing.”

A youngish white man with very short brown hair, wearing a white T-shirt and shorts with the strap of a black bag across his chest, sits on a cot next to an older white woman, with short, brown hair, who wears a short-sleeved navy blue blouse and jeans. He appears to be listening intently, leaning toward her, as she rests her near hand on the bed between them, her other hand between her knees, gazing beyond him to speak.
Stanislav Shoupletsov (left) listens to Tatyana Gubchenko, 66, as she becomes emotional discussing how she came to be in a shelter. Stanislav joined Under a Kind Roof after losing his close friend, an older neighbor. (Aryk Copley/KQED)
An older woman wearing a white, scoop-neck T-shirt, jeans, and white shoes, sits atop a peach-colored coverlet, the top of a desk looming above two pillows, in front of a row of wooden lockers.
Liudmyla Ivashchenko, 64, sits on her cot at a school-turned-shelter for refugees. (Aryk Copley/KQED)
A group of elderly people line up in front of a woman with a laptop.
Older refugees line up to offer their stories and details to Galbo so she can create profiles and her organization can try to find them more permanent shelter. (Aryk Copley/KQED)
An elderly woman stands in the doorway of a pink room.
Liudmyla Ivashchenko, 64, is the first candidate to view this newly leased apartment. She likes it, but insists she wants her own room after having no privacy for several months. (Aryk Copley/KQED)
A group of women behind a table of baked goods.
From left, Yevgeniy Sverdlik, Yana Sikorskaya, Maria Galbo and Vera Boguslavskaya host a bake and crafts sale on Chestnut St. in San Francisco to raise money for Under a Kind Roof on Dec. 18, 2022. (Aryk Copley/KQED)
A woman hangs a Ukrainian flag out of an apartment window.
Galbo hangs the Ukrainian flag from her apartment window in Albany. (Aryk Copley/KQED)
A husband and wife with their two children sit on a couch together.
Galbo (center right) with her husband, Yevgeniy Sverdlik (left), and two children, Lev (center left) and Alex (right), at their family apartment in Albany. (Aryk Copley/KQED)
A woman with blue hair wearing a blue Ukraine shirt.
Galbo in the courtyard outside her family apartment overlooking the Bay Area. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

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