Local volunteers describe delivery of medical supplies and relief work in Ukraine

Marita, a volunteer with Hands On Global who lives in Murphys, Calif., told a Calaveras County audience that she and other local volunteers travelled into Ukraine to deliver medical supplies and help with local relief efforts.

The trip combined deliveries — volunteers said they brought 15 labeled suitcases of medical supplies — with on-the-ground work: packing and distributing donations, helping at a hospital, weaving camouflage netting and assisting at a community farm. "I always knew where a pharmacy was," Marita said, describing how small signals like green pharmacy crosses helped volunteers navigate towns and reach people in need.

Why it matters: Volunteers said their work filled gaps where local health systems and charities were short on equipment. In one hospital, surgeons opened donated suitcases and highlighted continuing needs. A surgeon who identified himself as Vitaly told volunteers in English that "tourniquets save lives," underscoring clinicians' repeated requests for basic hemorrhage-control supplies.

Most of the volunteers' work was hands-on and local: numbering and labeling suitcases for specific doctors, helping orthopedic surgeons who have become trauma surgeons during the war, and repairing and delivering prosthetic equipment and fixators used to stabilize limbs. Volunteers described delivering packs to small hospitals and community centers in cities and towns including Lviv and Kyiv and visiting sites in western Ukraine and Crimea.

Volunteers also documented damage and aftermath from recent attacks. They said they were about 8 km from a site where a drone strike had killed one person and injured five others; local residents and volunteers immediately joined cleanup efforts to clear glass and debris after the danger passed.

At community events, residents showed a mix of gratitude and quiet determination, volunteers said. Marita described a group of elderly volunteers — the "grandmothers" or "babushka battalion" — who sew clothes and knit socks for displaced people and soldiers. She said the group packed boxes for villages recently struck by missiles and personally saw volunteers bring those boxes to the post office. "They cried when they told me where the box was going," she said.

Volunteers also helped build camouflage netting and taught English at local centers; one community center had been funded previously by U.S. sources but volunteers said that funding had been discontinued this year. They described a range of grassroots activities — from sewing and quilting donations to grassroots fundraisers, including a local soccer fundraiser organized to raise money to buy drones.

Marita and her colleagues described relationships they built with local medical staff. They said three orthopedic surgeons they worked with are now operating as trauma surgeons and that donated devices such as external fixators and prostheses were in high demand; volunteers reported that some prostheses had been supplied through partnerships with organizations in Minnesota.

Volunteers emphasized that small items often matter: surgical supplies, fixators to stabilize limbs for six months to a year, laptops refurbished for local use and basic items like sheets, clothing and tourniquets. "Every tourniquet saves a life," Vitaly told volunteers in a short statement translated on site.

Ending: Volunteers said they plan to return with more supplies and to continue building local partnerships. "We came here because we care," one Hands On Global volunteer told the audience, and they urged local residents to consider donating or supporting established relief organizations that operate in Ukraine.

Source note: Account is based on a Calaveras County meeting presentation and volunteers' first-person descriptions of trips to Ukraine; specific quotes are attributed to speakers who appeared in the meeting record.