Portsmouth man, after escaping Ukraine, partners with Caffe Kilim to help refugees

PORTSMOUTH — After a catastrophic earthquake in Turkey in 1999 left thousands of people dead and hundreds of thousands more displaced, Caffe Kilim raised funds and sent money back to Turkey to aid its distraught citizens.

More than two decades later, Caffe Kilim, a cozy coffeehouse on Islington Street is stepping up again, this time for the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

The business is partnering with recent Ukraine evacuee John Cavanaugh of Portsmouth to raise money for a Poland-based organization assisting refugees.

Cavanaugh, still settling into life at home after escaping the war-torn country earlier in the month, is working with his friends, husband and wife duo Yalcin Yazgan and Janice Schenker, owners of Caffe Kilim.

Previous story: John Cavanaugh of Portsmouth escapes Ukraine, arrives safely in Poland

Yazgan and Schenker have conducted collection efforts in the past, such as their clothing drive and fundraiser for Yazgan’s native Turkey.

"They've always been the first business and the first people in the community to offer assistance to other people in need," Cavanaugh said of Caffe Kilim.

Fundraiser for Ukraine

Cavanaugh said the fundraiser will be at Caffe Kilim at 6 p.m. Friday, March 18 — on his 62nd birthday. He said donations will be collected and given to the newly-formed UNITATEM Foundation, a grassroots group looking to assist women and children crossing to safety into Poland, The group helped Cavanaugh when he arrived at the Polish border.

“The elegance of this structure is that the funds go directly from people to people. There’s no government bureaucracy involved, there’s no large aid organization bureaucracy involved that eats up funds,” Cavanaugh said. “All the money goes directly to the organization and is made directly available to the women and children who are coming across the border that have left their lives behind and have nothing.”

Cavanaugh plans during the event Friday to give a brief presentation on his time in Ukraine.

'Depth of the human tragedy' emphasized

Donning a yellow and blue bow on the breast pocket of his shirt, Yazgan spoke from personal experience witnessing conflict, saying he grew up in Istanbul as Turkey was fighting against communist influences from the Soviet Union.

“I’ll try to help anybody,” he said.

Being a longtime patron of Caffe Kilim, Cavanaugh has become friends with Yazgan and Schenker, who reached out to him immediately as he began sharing posts on his social media from Ukraine before he crossed into Poland.

“Everybody’s watching the news, but the one thing that I think that’s the most important is the depth of the human tragedy going on as we speak with the refugees,” Schenker said. “We need to keep it not political and deal with the fact that refugees are in dire need of aid and help and to focus on that as we go forward.”

Having lived in Portsmouth since graduating college in 1982, Cavanaugh received his COVID-19 vaccination in 2021 and decided he wanted to take time to visit friends abroad. With several of those friends located in Ukraine, Cavanaugh planned a one-month stay in Kyiv, the country’s capital.

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Though he had visited the eastern European country in the past, Cavanaugh was not anticipating how much he would love his time in the country. It was that newfound feeling for Ukraine, an independent country since 1991 upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, that compelled him to stay put and live in a Kyiv apartment.

Cavanaugh left that apartment in the hours leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine late last month, capping off weeks of international concern as Russian troops amassed on its border with Ukraine. Before the war began, just after Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech ordering a “special military operation” in Ukraine, Cavanaugh had taken an overnight train from Kyiv to the western Ukraine city of Lviv, where he stayed in a hotel before his departure from the country.

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Though western Europe was a safer haven for Ukrainians at the start of the Russian invasion, Cavanaugh chronicled the start of war as seen from Lviv.

At one point, out of suspicion he might be operating as a Russian saboteur, armed Ukrainian soldiers stopped Cavanaugh in broad daylight and conducted a thorough search of him and his phone, he said. About 20 times a day while in Lviv for more than a week, Cavanaugh said he and other hotel guests took shelter in the hotel’s underground kitchen as air raid sirens sounded.

Previously describing the scene as a “sea of humanity,” with help from a friend’s acquaintance in Poland, the 61-year-old Cavanaugh safely crossed the border into Poland on Thursday, March 3.

Seeing refugees 'broke my heart'

The Portsmouth resident said it was hard to quantify just how many people, many of whom were lugging their belongings and leaving their home country, were attempting to flee to Poland that day. Images shared by Cavanaugh indicated there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people at the Korczowa-Krakovets border at that very moment.

It was the UNITATEM Foundation, based in Jaroslaw, Poland almost 20 miles from Ukraine, that had helped him get to the border. Picking him up on the outskirts of Lviv near a car wash, a driver affiliated with UNITATEM brought him to the border crossing.

However, before they arrived, Cavanaugh and the driver spotted a woman with six young children also looking to flee. They stopped, gathered the young family into the truck and piled in, their collective sights set on Poland.

On his lap, Cavanaugh held one of the youngest girls of the family, who he said sank into his lap without reservation and appeared to be incredibly relieved.

“I could just see this look in this child’s eyes of fear and confusion and it broke my heart, it just really broke my heart,” he said.

In tandem with Caffe Kilim, it’s those families and their ongoing suffering that Cavanaugh is keeping in mind as he aims to give back to the foundation that led him to safety.

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Though just the first step in what he is hoping becomes a larger Seacoast operation to fundraise for Ukrainians and the communities accepting them as refugees, Cavanaugh’s efforts will start in a place he loves. While in Ukraine, there were points where he wished he was back inside Caffe Kilim, sipping on a double espresso “made with love.”

“It’s always been my home away from home,” he said of the coffeehouse. “I kind of look at Kilim as the soul of Portsmouth. I have a lot of good friends who, over time, have been part of this community. It feels fantastic to be back here in this warmth and this supportive environment. It makes me feel like I can breathe again.”

An online fundraiser for the UNITATEM Foundation can be found here.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth NH man, after escaping Ukraine, partners with Caffe Kilim