Dan Parks is a member of the Wilmington East Rotary Club. With financial support from several Rotary clubs, friends, family, and former colleagues, Parks helped two Ukrainian women, Svetlana and Natallia, and their children move to the U.S. in December 2022. Their husbands had to stay behind to fight in the war, and they’re still fighting. But before their arrival, Parks described calling them in Kyiv to check on them.
“‘Don’t you ever get sleep?’ And she said, ‘No, [3 a.m.], that’s when the shelling starts. We don’t sleep well.’ I was sick, you know, all I wanted to do was get him out of dodge then and get him to safety,” he said.
Parks said this effort was one of the first times Rotary collaborated with another organization, Welcome.US, to support refugees relocated to the U.S…