Nena Peltin and Vicki Evans, co-chairs of the Ukrainian Subcommittee of the World Community Service Committee for the Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island (RCBI), reported on a weeklong trip in early May to visit the Zamek Niepolomice-Centrum Rotary Club in Krakow, Poland, strengthening a partnership that moves aid directly to Ukraine.
For four years, RCBI has run a quiet but powerful aid pipeline into Ukraine, working from 2022 through 2024 with the Rotary Club of Zamosc, Poland, and since 2024 with the Zamek Niepolomice-Centrum club. RCBI has sent $111,265 in aid through these Polish clubs to date, including $15,000 just before RCBI’s rummage sale this year. RCBI’s Polish contact, Wlodek Bentkowski, receives money RCBI wires to the Krakow club, buys goods on the European market and has them delivered to his house in Zamosc, 37 miles from the western Ukrainian border, where Rotarians in Ukraine collect them. A third partner, the Rotary Club of Kyiv-Sophia, receives the donations through Tamara Nedobor, RCBI’s Ukrainian contact, and distributes them to hospitals, social service agencies, and needy groups in Kyiv, Irpin, Bucha and other war-torn areas.
Every few months, Wlodek, Tamara, Vicki, and Nena meet by Zoom, where Tamara relays what’s needed most and RCBI wires money from rummage sale proceeds to address it. The aid reads like a survival guide for wartime: German-made generators (the club avoids Chinese-made equipment, citing shorter lifespans), power banks so families can reach soldiers at the front, well-stocked paramedic backpacks, sleeping bags, heating and cooking stoves for families living in barns or sheds after Russians destroyed their homes, children’s clothing, food, toiletries and headlamps – the last so children with two hours of daily electricity can finish homework after online school. Just before this year’s Annual Auction and Rummage Sale, RCBI sent its latest installment: $15,000 for generators and power banks.
In May, Peltin and Evans traveled to Krakow with husbands Steve and Lee to meet Wlodek and his club. Wlodek and his wife, Anna, covered nearly every meal for five days, and the Krakow club gave the Bainbridge couples roses, chocolate, vodka and Polish jewelry, along with tours of the salt mines, Schindler’s factory and Wawel Castle.
One evening, the Krakow club treated the group to a concert by 23 Ukrainian singers, one stop on a 265-stop European tour raising awareness of Ukraine’s plight. Peltin told one performer, “We are from the Bainbridge Island Rotary Club in the United States… people outside of Europe also care.”
Wlodek and Anna then hosted the group for two days in Zamosc, showing them the garage where he stores supplies bound for Ukraine. Despite four years of aid moving through a war zone, Peltin reports nothing has ever been confiscated – a point of pride for a network that gets things done “honestly, responsibly and efficiently.” As Peltin told Bentkowski at parting, “When we got here, we were all acquaintances, and now we are friends.” Evans and Peltin hope the Bentkowskis will visit Bainbridge Island in return.
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By Nancy Treder