Effort

The following sTory is an ediTorial submiTed by a sTudenT conTribuTing wriTer

There are many dates that I believe Washington & Jefferson College holds near and dear, but I propose a new date to add to that list: Mar. 29, 2022. On that date, this campus held its first fundraiser, which was collecting humanitarian aid to send to Ukraine. The fundraiser was a T-shirt raffle where the proceeds went to two organizations, both giving humanitarian aid to Ukraine. People bought raffle tickets for $5 each for the chance to win one out of five Ukrainethemed W&J T-shirts.

This idea started to gain some ground when I asked the panel on Mar. 3 about the situation in Ukraine and about how we as a campus could help improve the situation. I remember Dr. Vdovichenko said that the best thing to do would be to raise funds for humanitarian aid. From there, I decided to present the idea of a fundraiser to SGA and later reserved a table in the lobby of the Commons.

My connection with Ukraine started before this situation came about. Many of my ancestors were born in what is now Ukraine. Both of my mom’s parents were born there along with and my dad’s grandmother. My mom’s mother was my last ancestor to be born in Ukraine She was born on a different 29: Jul. 30, 1929. For a long time, I was curious about her early childhood home of Kamenets

Podolskiy, the town in Ukraine. Last year, I was so grateful to get the position of Town Leader of this town on JewishGen - Ukraine RD (the Ukrainian subdivision of a Jewish genealogical organization). With this new position I decided to form a group of people that were also interested in this town, get documents relating to people that lived there and initiate an effort to get them transcribed and transliterated. Out of gratitude for everyone in Ukraine who helped me not only with this effort but also with getting documents, I realized that it was my responsibility to organize this fundraiser on Courtesy Nickolas Bartel Nickolas Bartel (left) and Samuel Lerner (right) sit outside of the Commons Dining Hall on March 29th, 2022 to raise money to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine. campus that would help out Ukrainians. Flash forward, the fundraiser started, and soon afterward I realized that Samuel Lerner it needs to continue. Because of that, I made arrangements Red & Black contributor for a table to be set up for this fundraiser for the next day and I emailed Dr. Dunn to see if we could combine ALD’s bake sale for Ukraine humanitarian aid with my fundraiser. Thankfully, it worked out. In total, the fundraiser raised over $150 in proceeds which will be going to humanitarian aid. I want to say a big thank you to the Student Voting Coalition and Alpha Phi Omega for partnering with me.