The pandemic economy made many Americans amateur experts in supply-chain disruptions. Paper towels were suddenly a hot commodity. Eggs disappeared from store shelves. And anyone buying a new couch or car could expect to wait months.
Imagine now what supply-chain issues look like in a conflict zone. For the last year, meeting even the most basic needs was nearly impossible in Ukraine as shops ran out of goods, people couldn’t go out for essential items, and supply chains broke down amidst shelling, widespread destruction, and closures of supermarkets and pharmacies.
In Ukraine, a functioning supply chain quickly became a matter of life and death.
This crisis presented new challenges for humanitarian organizations already addressing the devastating effects of Covid-19, resulting in even greater need among the most vulnerable. To make sure aid continued to those populations, nonprofits such as the one I lead, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, needed to get creative. For us, that meant developing our own supply chain to ensure that the people we serve in Ukraine, predominately elderly, impoverished Jews, survived.
As the conflict continues with no end in sight, such an operation and the lifesaving aid it delivers will be needed on a grand scale. The United Nations last month appealed for $5.6 billion to address the humanitarian toll. For the nonprofit humanitarian community, this is a tall order — but one we must be poised to meet.
Three lessons from our experience can help aid organizations succeed in supporting people in Ukraine and around the world whose very survival depends on the timely delivery of food, medicine, and other critical items.
First, goods and supplies need to match needs on the ground. An influx of well-meant but unusable items is common after a disaster. To avoid this, direct and open communication between donors and aid organizations is critical. When I worked for a nonprofit focused on volunteer management after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I learned that only a fraction of the items people offered to donate were needed. We realized the importance of setting realistic expectations among those who wanted to donate.
In Ukraine, my organization initially had many unsolicited offers of in-kind donations and supplies that could not be deployed. Often this was because the items did not match our needs or because exorbitant shipping costs and delays from the United States made them unusable.
We responded by adopting a more targeted approach. Specifically, we worked with the Straus Company, a major Israeli food producer and distributor of items such as coffee, tea, and snacks. Straus had warehouses in Europe and offered to donate supplies to us. We coordinated directly with the company’s staff and provided lists of items urgently needed at the refugee centers we ran at the border. The result: We got exactly what we needed when we needed it.
Second, existing infrastructure and passionately engaged professionals and volunteers can help reach those at the end of an organization’s emergency supply chain. In addition to Ukraine, my organization has worked in a nonpolitical fashion for years in 11 countries across the former Soviet Union, including in border nations such as Moldova, to address the humanitarian needs of tens of thousands of vulnerable Jews. That meant we already had a network of people on the ground in those countries at our social-service centers, known as Heseds, and Jewish community centers. They became the foundation for a steady movement of lifesaving food, medicine, and other basic needs.
Early in the conflict, we began tracking needs through the Heseds in Ukraine and created call centers to fulfill additional needs, including evacuating more than 13,000 people out of the country. We set up a situation room in Israel to monitor needs and ensure our team in Ukraine could distribute aid.
We also opened our own logistical humanitarian-aid hubs in Ukrainian border cities and found trucking companies willing to go into Ukraine from elsewhere in Europe to deliver supplies. Ukrainian truckers then brought the items to Heseds across the country, where they were distributed by our staff and local Jewish-community volunteers. These brave people endured shelling, curfews, and air-raid alerts to make sure homebound elderly or poor families got the aid they needed.
What Partnership Really Means
Third, partnerships can produce creative solutions to daunting challenges. In the nonprofit world, “partnership” is often a euphemism for major funding relationships. But there are times when what’s really needed are the strengths of a partner beyond the money being donated. For us, two partners proved invaluable.
The Claims Conference, which supports Holocaust survivors in Ukraine and throughout the former Soviet Union in cooperation with our organization, shipped truckloads of lifesaving goods directly from Germany to Ukraine. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, or IFCJ, had planes taking Ukrainian immigrants to Israel. We used those planes to get supplies into the region on their return trips, and then we trucked the goods into Ukraine. Blankets were packed in the passenger section of the planes, and the baggage section was filled with food and medicines whose costs IFCJ generously covered.
The urgency of the situation in Ukraine meant we could not outsource this work or spend our precious time pushing for expedited shipping processes and policies to get aid to those suffering from hunger and illness. Our ownership of the whole chain enabled us to adapt to a continuously evolving situation. And while this model may not work for every organization, using at least one of the three lessons can make humanitarian interventions far more effective.
We were also fortunate that buoying our efforts was tens of millions of dollars in philanthropic support — from the Jewish Federations of North America, the Claims Conference, IFCJ, United Jewish Appeal—Federation of New York, individuals, families, corporations, and foundations. All this ensured we had critically needed funding to keep the operation going and the flexibility to make modifications in real time.
Despite continued global disruptions of goods and services, we’ve been able to deliver more than 800 tons of humanitarian aid, providing continuous care to some 46,000 people in Ukraine, including the internally displaced and new poor, and to thousands of refugees who passed through Moldova. But in many ways, our work has just begun.
The economic impact of the crisis, which expands beyond Ukraine, is marked by high unemployment and inflation that makes even the most basic goods unaffordable. Reflective of this trend, Moody’s just estimated that the country’s GDP shrank by nearly 30 percent last year.
The protracted nature of conflict means we also need to move quickly to address corresponding spikes in need. Winter required us to provide seasonal aid to 22,000 people, including generators and self-heating food. The beginning of spring and the start of Passover next week is requiring the delivery of 50,000 boxes of matzo and holiday food packages to tens of thousands of Jews throughout Ukraine.
As we pray for the day we can shift from basic needs to the bricks and mortar of community reconstruction, we’ll ensure that individuals and communities most in need of help are getting it. It’s a strategy that can be replicated across the network of humanitarian-aid organizations working every day to help the victims of strife and disaster.
