There are places Natasha Dukach loved as a college music student in Kharkiv, a city in northeastern Ukraine just 25 miles from the Russian border, that are now just rubble and dust, the result of relentless Russian bombs. Dukach went to Kharkiv to study violin, became a professional violinist, and left with an enduring love for the city and its people.

Dukach is currently an MS student at BUSPH, and watched from her home in Boston as news footage confirmed the worst of her fears, with scenes of smoldering cities and towns that she once knew in better times. The people in those places, whose lives were threatened by the same bombs that flattened their schools and homes, were desperate and on the move in what the UN estimates as the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

She initially tried to help by booking hotel and Airbnb rooms for fleeing families, but said she quickly found the process frustrating and inefficient. She wanted to do something more, but felt she needed to be closer to the source of the problem.

They didn’t plan to flee their beloved country.

I came to my husband and said, “I’m going.” And he just looks at me and says, “Okay, I’m going with you.” So fortunately, we have kids and our 17-year-old stepped up and she’s like, “Okay, you guys got to go, I understand, I got it… I’ll watch the youngest.” [Ed: a younger brother, 8 years old.]

So she helped us with this and we flew to Romania. In Romania, we came to the border and yes, there were big organizations that already were taking care of accommodations for women with children and elderly, getting them to hotels, basically, setting up shelters. But it was very obvious that those refugees, who were fleeing the country, they were never planning. They didn’t plan to flee their beloved country.

They don’t know that their status from being a dignified citizen of Ukraine changed in a split second to being a homeless refugee with absolutely no money and no knowledge, no language of the countries where they’re going. And they just come to the border and we ask, “You guys have savings to have something, so maybe you would need to exchange it from local Ukrainian money to euros. And they’re just like, “We don’t have any. We just grabbed whatever cash we had in the house.” Some women got jewelry, but what you going to do with this? There is nobody who wants their earrings, their stuff.

So we decided, well, $100 in each passport for every woman, of every mom, with children or any elderly people, 60 plus, will not hurt in local currency. So what we did, first we started, we got our own money. We just exhausted our ATM accounts and we withdrew in local Romanian money.

Thank you for your money. But, can I have a bath?

Although on the border, I’m going to actually praise Romanian government, amazing job. They provide everything, but they do not provide tickets on the buses where those women want to go. They provide free buses to free shelters or free buses to some, let’s say, Romanian capital, Bucharest. But they do not provide buses to Germany, Italy, wherever, Bulgaria, I don’t know. So we were like, “Okay, this $100 is exactly the price of the ticket to Germany.” Of course, we can’t pay for all three kids. But at least one will be covered.

So we told them, “Okay, this is $100 in your passport. It’s not $100, it’s in local currency. This is 400 leus.” And that’s basically what we are doing. We meet absolutely every woman with children, or old couples, or people with disabilities … And we just give them cash… There is a huge difference between $0 and $100. I wouldn’t say, that’s happiness or euphoria. You can’t measure hope. You can’t measure stuff, but you perceive it when a person is completely broken. There was an old lady with her grandson. And she came to us and said she has no money. And she learned that the ticket to Germany cost 120 euros. She’s just dropped on the ground and started crying, “It’s impossible.” It should not be this way.

We’re working on Romanian border in the town of Siret. And we are now fundraising. We get more and more people donating to the account. It’s actually the nonprofit status right now, so it totally tax deductible. So we can go now to the Hungarian border. I’m going, the next week, probably to Hungarian or Poland border. And I’m kind of scared going to the Poland border because the majority of refugees, they just go to Poland. So if I am getting so emotional on the Romanian border, which is kind of the smaller portion of all the refugees are going through this border, I need to mentally prepare myself for Poland. But I think I have no choice not to betray again, my memories of my absolutely wonderful time when I lived in Ukraine.

I’m staying there waiting for a woman to cross the border. I see her stumbling on towards me, barely moving. And she walks in such a weird way, like a wooden leg, her legs are not moving. It’s like, well, majority of them are super cold. There’s thermal tents, we are just defrosting kids there. But that woman, well, it was something especially strange about her. So I’m coming to her, and we ask, “What’s going on?” And she says, in a different dimension, an absolutely distant kind of quiet voice, she tells me, that she miscarried in the line while waiting on the other side, the Ukrainian side.

So she was staying there seven hours in -7 Celsius and she miscarried and actual blood got frozen on her pants. And she was so ashamed of this, that I could see her blood frozen on her pants. She said she doesn’t need my $100 dollars. She lost the child that she was trying to save while her husband… I don’t know she even has a husband, at this point because… And she was like, “Thank you for your money. But, can I have a bath? I need to wash.”

Who knows where they’re going?

And again, another child died from hypothermia, like frostbite. The Romanian Government, they finally, brought thermal tents, where we defrost children there. And they’re screaming because when the blood circulation starts, goes through the body, normally they have this extreme pain in their limbs and they scream, especially the young ones. Old ones, can hold it, but young ones, they just make shrieking sounds.

And there are multiple stories. Another woman, actually, I couldn’t sleep because of her. She came with two children, just normal Ukrainian woman when she came, she’s in deep shock. But since the Romanians on our side and people who sort people in which bus to go, just the bus driver came to me, and said, “Hey, there is a woman in my bus. I really don’t understand where she going. And I really think something like is off. Can you just talk to her?” I speak a little bit of Ukrainian, but I understand Ukrainian and I speak Russian. I speak English, some German. But still, I can communicate and understand what they need.

And so we came over to this woman and asked, “Hey, where are you going?” And she said, “I’m going to India.”  We told her, “Well, there is no bus to India from Romania.” And there’s two kids and it’s like, “Why are you going to India?” And she’s like, “Well, somebody’s waiting for me there.” And I was like, “But okay, how much money do you have?” And she’s like, “Well, I don’t know, $100, for three people. And I was like, “Well, you are not going to make this to India. I understand maybe somebody is waiting for you there, but it’s impossible. So I can give you another $100, but it’s still not going to be helpful. You should go to the shelter that they provide. You can stay. There is a local church, evangelical church. And you should change your mind.”

And she was really insistent. And we said, “But you will end up in some shelter and maybe eventually they’ll get you to India. But what is in India?”

Some people told me, “Oh, somebody’s waiting for us.” But it’s usually a taxi driver who is waiting for them. There is this massive amount of women who tell you, “Oh, somebody is waiting for me there.” And once you ask them a second question, you realize, this is not a relative or a friend who is waiting for them. There are just people who are just going to get them to another point to another point. And obviously, we saw lots of human trafficking. We were talking to local police and one day, they actually arrested two human traffickers who were taking advantage of young Ukrainian women with kids, without kids, just shuffling them around into micro buses. Who knows where they’re going? But again, these women, they cannot think. They just can’t. It’s too cold and they’re very distressed.

And most important, do not cry.

We have a team of medics who are going to help people on the Poland border. So all wounded soldiers go to Poland and there is better railroad communication between the Ukraine capital, Kyiv, and Poland. So there are many more people who need this kind of cash, again, that’s the local currency, zlotys. But also, there many more people who are wounded and they are taking care of. But after a while, again, you couldn’t even predict what they might need. So you can cover their basic necessities, but they might need something. They give SIM cards with the internet. It’s all fine. It’s all free. But at some point, you just don’t know. And especially the situation is more relevant to moms with children because who knows, that kid might want something and you don’t know what calms this kid down, so he’s not freaking out.

So many hysterical kids, you cannot stop them crying. They’re just crying, this high-pitched, shrieking voice and their pupils like dots. They don’t see you. And there is some lollipop or something that might calm them down, that only moms know about. We don’t know. We might give them a Teddy bear, but that’s not what calms this particular kid down. So that’s why for moms, it’s super relevant to give them cash so they can choose and it gives them more choices than we can predict they may need.

But again, my husband, he took on the fundraising part with his friend and a partner, Alex Foreman. They started this fundraising campaign. They set up the nonprofit status, etcetera. So it is going on. Then we were thinking, “Okay, the bottleneck would be finding trusted volunteers.” And I am working with volunteers on the ground and I am in charge of recruiting volunteers, talking to them, preparing training, even, because that’s kind of psychological work and you need people with very strong nerves.

So I’m recruiting volunteers, trusted volunteers, who are ready to go, can spend their own money on tickets, accommodations and food. You can stay in shelters with refugees or in the tent. If you don’t want to spend for the hotel room, you can stay there for free. There is no problem. I need volunteers who speak Russian and Ukrainian and English because we need English to communicate with local authorities. And most of them speak pretty fluent English, so there is no problem. But for the refugees, we need those who speak Russian and Ukrainian and kind of have very strong nerves, so they’re ready for any situation.

So you adjust your entire world, your psychology, your fears, but you just give it to them immediately in the spot, without thinking. And most important, do not cry. Once you cry, Ukrainian people start feeling very sorry about you. And they just tell me, “Oh, you give us money, but there is others in the line, they’re in worse conditions than me.” And you look at this person and you’re just like, “Don’t worry about it. We’re going to give to them too.”

To learn more, donate, or volunteer: Cash For Refugees