Annandale teacher volunteers at refugee center for Ukrainians

After volunteering to help Ukrainian refugees, Annandale High School teacher Meredith Hedrick has a better understanding of the issues students face in her English-as-a-second-language classes.

Hedrick, the ESOL department chair, worked with World Central Kitchen May 6-17 in a Polish border town, where she helped distribute food and other supplies to newly arrived Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion.

She decided to volunteer with refugees because “that really aligned with my work, my interests, my passion.”
Hedrick has an extensive international background. She served in Turkmenistan in the Peace Corps, worked in Kosovo, lived in the Middle East, and speaks Russian.

In Poland she was stationed at a refugee center in a repurposed Tesco big-box store in Przemysl.

Many of the Ukrainians she encountered had been traveling for days with no food or water. When they got off the bus at the border town, they were given the first hot meals they’d had since leaving home.

The center makes more than 6,000 meals a day and about 3,000 sandwiches an hour, Hedrick says. A temporary animal center nearby takes care of refugees’ pets.

One Ukrainian woman who made it to the center spoke about how she spent eight hours sitting on the floor of a bus with her dog while traveling through Russian-occupied areas. She then had another 17-hour journey to the border. Another refugee told how she was sitting in her apartment in Ukraine while all the glass shattered.

Two of the people Hedrick worked with were Ukrainian teachers who fled at the beginning of the war. They were worried about their husbands who volunteered to fight.

The meals prepared by the World Central Kitchen are homemade and nutritious, often including fresh fruit. When Hedrick was there, TV personality Rachael Ray also showed up, and the King’s Hawaiian bread company sent a generous care package.

Hedrick brought toys for the children and other supplies. But what the refugees really needed most, she found, were things like canisters for cooking discretely in the forest without attracting the Russians. Her husband is heading to Ukraine to bring medical supplies.

For others who want to help Ukrainian families, she suggests donating to the Mad Foundation’s Operation Safe Drop or World Central Kitchen

At Annandale High School, Hedrick teaches many students who’ve had to leave war-torn countries, including the most recent wave from Afghanistan.

Her brief stay in Poland deepened her understanding of “what it’s like to leave your country under challenging circumstances and be a foreigner in a place with a different language, different currency, and different cultural norms.”
Her volunteer work reinforced “the importance of teaching our kids empathy,” she says. “We have a moral responsibility to help people in need.”

“There’s also a sense of hope,” Hedrick says. Her students “have always been the volunteers who really step up and help the newly arrived students.”