Former Green Bay West High School teacher raising money for families in Ukraine

DE PERE - Natalia Kryzhanivska didn’t expect to be in De Pere for this long. She has been living in Wisconsin for over a year with her husband, Nabeel Rasheed, and their 3-year-old son Michael.

February will mark two years since Kryzhanivska fled her home in Ukraine and the war began. She never thought the war would last this long and worries it’ll be prolonged even more while the rest of her family is still in Ukraine.

They were able to find refuge in Poland and stayed there for six months before making it to Wisconsin to protect their son, who was just 20 months old at the time of the invasion. One of her colleagues at the school she worked at in Kyiv knew someone at West High School in Green Bay and got in touch with Ward Bacon, a former West High teacher.

Bacon helped Kryzhanivska’s family get settled in De Pere. They arrived in the area Oct. 1, 2022.

They are the only family that Bacon has helped that came to Wisconsin, but he's helped nine other families — eight families are still in Poland and one family went back to Ukraine in Bacon's "Mission to Poland" fundraiser. Bacon raised money to pay for the families' rent and utilities for a year. Now, all the families are self-sufficient.

The fundraiser also received $500 in medical supplies and $5,250 to provide generators and space heaters to five families in Kharkiv, Ukraine, last winter.

Now Bacon is hoping to raise nearly $13,000 to send generators and space heaters to 12 families in Ukraine. He is collecting donations through the end of November.

"If we can say we helped that many families, then I guess we did something," Bacon said.

Refuge in Wisconsin

Kryzhanivska still remembers the day Russia invaded Ukraine so clearly. A day earlier, she watched so many airplanes in the sky and somehow knew that it would be the last time she’d be there.

“It was a strange feeling,” Kryzhanivska said.

She decided to go to the park for some quiet and remembers how it felt watching the airplanes.

“It was like they were putting fear in your heart,” she said.

She had a feeling that she should stock up on baby formula for her son that day. In the days after the invasion, there was so much panic and chaos, she remembers. Her husband waited outside a shop for six hours to find bread and baby formula to last them a week because they didn’t think the war could go on for longer.

Her family heard the first set of air raid sirens and went down to the basement. They stayed there for 10 days after the war started. As she saw the damage and bombings, it still didn’t feel like real life.

“People were absorbing it like it was a reality show,” she said.

Kryzhanivska was worried about making it out if they were to flee Ukraine and didn’t know if they’d make it safely. They were told there was a bus at 7 a.m. one day and if they made it, they could get to Poland.

She packed diapers, baby formula, and one outfit and left everything else.

Another brutal winter in Ukraine

Kryzhanivska’s family members are waiting until the war ends to go back to their home.

With her parents and her friends still in Ukraine, everyday is still stressful. Her dad is 56 and can still be called to serve in the military.

“You don't know who will die tomorrow if it’s your family or somebody else’s,” Kryzhanivska said.

Last winter, when her parents didn’t have electricity or internet, Kryzhanivska lost contact with them for a few days. It was a tough winter for them living in isolation. Her father told Kryzhanivska he “was losing his mind” because he was inside all day since it was too cold and dangerous to go out and there wasn’t electricity. In some villages where the bombings damaged everything, it was getting harder to find any hope in the brutal winter.

“There was no information, no internet, no connection,” Kryzhanivska said. “They kept them in fear for a long time.”

Kryzhanivska was an administrator at a school in Kyiv before fleeing the country. She worries about how many kids will grow up without an education or vocabulary because of how long the war is going on.

Kryzhanivska could tell Michael could feel the fear during the war. When they moved to the Green Bay area, during the first few weeks he would get scared when he heard the weekly emergency siren testing on Wednesdays, she said. Now he’s become used to it.

It took him more time to start talking because they moved between Ukraine, Poland and the U.S., and he was frustrated navigating between hearing Polish, Russian, English, and Ukrainian.

Kids in Ukraine had to adjust to remote learning during the pandemic and now lose years of learning while they just try to live during the war. Instead of learning to recognize words and numbers, toddlers are learning how to distinguish sirens from bombings.

“They don’t have a childhood,” Kryzhanivska said. “All the kids will study in bomb shelters and dust in the winter.”

Raising money for generators, heaters

Ward Bacon hopes to raise enough money to send generators and space heaters to 12 families like Kryzhanivska who will spend another winter in Ukraine this year.

“It’s been almost two years. If you ask me about it, I’ll keep crying and crying and I wish it will stop,” Kryzhanivska said. “I don't want this to be another year. I miss my family.”

How to donate

Bacon is working with the Humanosh Foundation to send supplies to families. Donations will be accepted through Nov. 30 and supplies will be delivered in December.

• Venmo, PayPal, check, or deposit at Capital Credit Union into the "Mission to Poland" account

• You can make a donation directly through Paypal to Humanosh.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Former Green Bay West High School teacher raising money for Ukraine