On the morning of January 24, 2004, a cold, snowy Saturday, a crew consisting of UUARC officers, employees and volunteers came together at Headquarters to load a 40’ container headed for Lviv, Ukraine.

The load was a particularly valuable one – including $83,000 worth of prosthetic joints donated by Mr. Alex Khowaylo of IMPLEX, 40 boxes of crucial surgical equipment donated by Dr. Robert L. Buly of The Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC, 2 dental suites donated by Dr. Roman Kocopey of Trenton, and a surgical microscope for cataract surgery donated by Mr. Kurt Schroeder of Los Angeles, California. Along with the medical equipment, 75 of 220 boxes of medical journals were sent through the efforts of Dr. George Hajduczok of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics of the University at Buffalo SUNY, and thanks to the organizational talents of Dora Horbachevska of University at Buffalo SUNY and Dr. Mykola Doliba of the University of Pennsylvania.

There also were the always-needed boxes of clothing and personal hygiene items for homes for the elderly and orphanages, among them 30 boxes of clothing collected by the children of St. Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic School in Philadelphia, for the children of the Sisters of St. Basil internat in Ivano-Frankivsk.

In all, 4 separate hospitals, one university library, 4 internaty/schools, 8 social organizations as well as many poor families benefited from this one container-load. A total of 705 parcels was loaded onto the container and sent to Ukraine, thanks to funding from the US State Department and USAID (US Agency for International Development) through Counterpart, International.