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March 1, 2001

'The people say it's helping'

Woman sending supplies of all kinds to citizens of Ukraine hometown
By TOM CARR
Record-Eagle staff writer

     
      CADILLAC - When Nailya Cederstrom writes home, she usually sends along some syringes, gauze, bandages, medicines, school supplies and clothing, too.
      Cederstrom, a native of Pervomaysk, Ukraine, has organized a group of Cadillac-area residents who regularly send packages of essentials to the impoverished residents of her hometown, population 100,000.
      Pervomaysk is not only suffering the hardships being felt elsewhere in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, but the city's military base was closed after the Soviet Union dissolved.
      "Some people there can only eat meat once a month and they forget the taste of butter because they can't afford it," Cederstrom said.
      She and her husband Michael Cederstrom started out sending items on their own about three years ago. But with the high price of postage - the cost of sending the 22-pound packages they send twice a week recently jumped from $35.69 per package to $51.29 - and the need for more and more goods there, they've enlisted the help of doctors, friends and others.
      Nailya Cederstrom knows the needs of the schools in particular. Until 1993, she was superintendent of Pervomaysk's District No. 5, which had 2,500 students at the time.
      That year the U.S. government initiated a program to bring 250 of the brightest students from across the Soviet Union to the United States as exchange students.
      Cederstrom coordinated the effort in her district and assembled some of the schools' best students. After they took tests, wrote essays and had interviews with visiting U.S. officials, her daughter, Elena Tchebotareva, was chosen to come to America.
      Elena stayed with a host family in Cadillac. When the host family moved to Lake City during the school year, she transferred there and graduated from Lake City High School in 1994. She has since gone on to Central Michigan University, where she graduated this year, and plans to attend Detroit School of Law in the fall.
      While Elena was a high school student, Nailya, who was divorced, came to Cadillac to be close to her daughter, though she didn't know any English at the time. Through First Baptist Church of Cadillac, she got a job cleaning houses for a living and made more in a day than the equivalent of $40 per month she earned in Ukraine as superintendent.
      Eventually, she met Michael through mutual friends and the two married in 1997.
      Nailya often told him of the hardships people faced in Pervomaysk.
      One woman she knew worked as a teacher for 30 years and had to survive on a pension of $10 a month after her retirement - a drop from the $20 a month she earned while teaching. The woman was able to afford a hut with a dirt floor on the outskirts of Pervomaysk and she grew potatoes and onions on a small plot of government-owned land near her home to supplement her income. One night, just before harvest, someone stole her crop right out of the ground.
      She also told of people who worked as doctors and made $25 to $35 per month, and that those who need medical care have to take their own syringes or rubber gloves to the hospital with them because of the lack of supplies.
      Mike suggested they send whatever they could to help out.
      As the packages grew into a regular thing, Nailya mentioned it in passing to her physician, Lawrence Schappa, and her dentist, Loren DeHaan. Both offered supplies. Eventually, other friends became interested.
      With the donated time of lawyer James Carr and accountant Linda Langdon, the group has formed a non-profit, tax-exempt organization with a 12-member board.
      Doctors send syringes, gauze, bandages and medicines they receive as samples. Second Chance, a second-hand store, has donated clothes.
      Other members chip in what they can.
      "If I send a sport coat to a doctor there, he may have never had a sport coat," said Jerry Faloon, one of the board members.
      The organization also holds a garage sale twice a year to benefit the cause and members scour other rummage sales to find items they can send.
      Nailya said it makes her feel good to help the people back home. It also helps that she knows some of the people they're dealing with so she can track the items and make sure they're making it to those who need them.
      "We don't want to go through the government, because then the government decides where it will go," she said. "I was there and I was school superintendent, and I know how humanitarian aid disappears."
      The group still needs help paying for the postage and the twice-monthly phone calls Nailya makes to Ukraine at 39 cents per minute to find out what's needed and if supplies they've already sent are making it to their destination.
      "We always think that what we're doing is like a drop in the sea," she added. "But the people there say it's helping."
      For more information, call Nailya Cederstrom at (231) 876-0182.