For those of you that know me well, know that my logical robot side is decent at checking emotions at the door with little regard to peoples feelings. That said, the irrational human side of me believes in Karma and luck. I would consider myself quite lucky in life, things just tend to fall in place (most of the time), then again I work my ass off to give luck the opportunity to find me, therefore in my head:
Luck = Hard work to help it find you.
With the above in mind I wanted to breakdown the “how and why” yesterday we signed an apartment contract and agreed to pay a years rent for two Ukrainian girls Diana and Valeria. Why out of the thousands of Ukrainians arriving daily did these girls “get lucky?”. Lets break it down by looking at my completely unscientific method of hard work, karma, and luck.
Hard work meets luck.
When the first round of bombing happened on the 25th of February Valeria and Diana made the extremely tough decision to leave their families who could not travel for reasons such as health. The headed for Sofia, Bulgaria where they had an Aunt who had found a man that could provide them shelter for a few days. The two girls then reached out to Zabobroto who were in the early days of kicking off their vision of the Open Doors Situation Center.
Meet Kremena, Founder of “Do Good” (Zadobroto) In my opinion meeting her is where Valeria and Diana got lucky and started making their own luck.
More hard work and a bit of luck helped them find an apartment that was free until May, but this is where I believe luck only takes a person so far. Almost immediately after their arrival, Valeria and Diana began volunteering to care for the children that Ukrainian mothers leave in the children’s corner of the Open Doors Situation Center while looking for housing and work.
“After we met Kremena, we decided that we should help the children who come from Ukraine in some way, because we are very grateful to the Bulgarians who helped us here. We wanted to return this good gesture in some way, to be here and do our best.”
Karma meets luck
These girls were already volunteering before Katie and I became involved. I had met them a couple of times as Polly (staying with us) was coming with and helping in the children’s room with them, but to be honest I just thought they were Bulgarian volunteers. It wasn’t till I woke up one morning and happened to read a post that Kremena shared on facebook about the two girls did I even know they were from Ukraine. But more importantly the part that jumped out to me was that they only had free accommodation until May.
Karma for the win.
The next day I met with Kremena to ask what the situation was with the girls. She told me that they were showing up every day to help with the children and were now being paid a small amount of money by the foundation, but they had no accommodation at the end of the month. Also Valeria was sending her family in Ukraine her entire salary as last year Valeria’s father suffered a stroke and became disabled and their mother cared for him so could not work, her brother was still a student.
It was without a doubt that these two girls fit the profile of our goal to use your funds in an efficient long term way, so with more hard work (on Yanas behalf) we have made sure there is one less worry in their lives so they can continue to work hard and make a difference.
Back to logic
2 girls working hard, helping other Ukranians daily at the Open Doors Situation Center, while sending money back home to help their families in the Ukraine, and now also taking weekend graphics design courses in Sofia.
This in my book is real bang for buck as we are not just helping 2 people, we are helping those they are helping, their families and giving these two extremely hard working girls a fighting chance in a world built to keep us down.
You can read the full story of how Diana and Valeria made it to Sofia, Bulgaria from Odessa, Ukraine can be read here (google translate it)