Ukrainian social workers, therapists, undertake long journey to meet with Sonoma County counterparts

When Hanna Yefimtseva boarded a train to leave Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine, the city was under Russian attack. When she got to Kyiv, where she changed trains, the capital, too, was being shelled.

That was Jan. 21.

“I realized that regardless, regardless, I have to pursue this, and I have to go on,” Yefimtseva said about two weeks later, recalling the 24-hour first-leg of her recent journey to the United States — it took her four days to get to Washington D.C. — and ultimately to Sebastopol.

“I think when you do have a mission in mind, the entire universe will be helping you,” said Yefimtseva, chief specialist at EdCamp Ukraine, a teacher training organization.

She was among a group of six social workers, therapists and psychologists who traveled to Sonoma County from war-torn Ukraine to research how to develop networks to support children and families as part of a grant-funded venture organized by Sebastopol World Friends, a volunteer organization that manages Sebastopol’s sister city activities.

The Open World program, sponsored by the U.S. Congress, gave about $9,000 to the World Friends to cover expenses related to the visit. The Sebastopol group has since 2008 has hosted six previous Ukrainian delegations on training exchanges.

This year’s Open World program is distinctly tinged by conflict, with delegates responding to the horrors Russia’s invasion has visited on the eastern European nation of 44 million. Schools and other institutions have been transformed into hubs of care for children and their families traumatized by years of fighting and killing.

“We are really focusing on supporting the kids of our military personnel that were killed,” said Olena Zhyvko, a combat veteran who now heads the Union of Volunteers, a veterans service organization from Lviv. She said she also hoped to learn more about how to assist and support the veterans she works with.

Like all the visiting Ukrainians, Zhyvko spoke through an interpreter during a Feb. 2 interview conducted at a dining room table in the Sebastopol home of Steve and Patty Levenberg, members of the World Friends’ group.

“We were anxious to strengthen and reanimate our connection with friends in Ukraine as we came out of the pandemic and especially as their defense against Russian aggression intensified,” said Steve Levenberg, whose front window displays a “We Stand with Ukraine” sign.

The visit comes amid an entrenched standoff in Congress over the future of military aid for Ukraine, with Republicans increasingly bent on withholding support amid growing pro-Russian sympathies in the MAGA wing of the party.

The World Friends group organized a packed agenda of activities for the Ukrainian visitors, who arrived Jan. 26 for two weeks. It included meetings with elected officials as well as Sebastopol’s police chief, therapists specializing in treating children with trauma and organizations that advocate for mental health.

“The instrument I really liked was the toolbox,” said Anna Karpova, a social worker with the social services center of the city council in Chyhyryn, one of Sebastopol’s sister cities. She described a set of practices the group had been introduced to by Toolbox Project founder Mark Collin, a Santa Rosa therapist, which included breathing and listening exercises and ways to discard “things we don’t need.”

Zhyvko shared photographs on her cellphone of two soldiers whose legs had been amputated and said she wanted to introduce them to therapy dogs, which the group had learned about during a visit to the Sonoma County Office of Education.

“It's very important that the dogs are not judgmental and they don't care whether they have a leg or not,” Zhyvko said. “You know, sometimes, people will feel embarrassed about not having everything intact and they would be hiding their lives, but dogs don't care. They love you anyway.”

All of the Ukrainian delegates are women; most men between 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving the country. As much as they have taken away from their trip, they have made impressions on those they’ve met here.

“They're serving children whose schools have been destroyed by bombs, or children who have lost parents in the war,” said Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, who spoke with the delegation for nearly two hours in her Jan 29 meeting. “And as much as we've been through a lot in Sonoma County with our fires and our floods and of course, the pandemic, the deep trauma of war and the challenge of providing services in that kind of an environment struck me the most.”

Sebastopol Mayor Diana Rich said that the group’s very presence was an inspiring act of hope.

“Why would they come here if not for their belief that their country will recover and survive and need their expertise and contributions to help move into a brighter future,” Rich said.

For the Ukrainians, visits such as this are building blocks, said Olga Tkachuk, who is traveling with the delegation as a program facilitator.

“We are a post-Soviet country. We're only 33 years old as an independent country and we're still transitioning, but we are on the track of democratic values,” she said. “So we are going to toward democracy and we aim for democratic values. And we of course have a long way to go, but we think programs like this are very helpful.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @jeremyhay