‘Dreams Are Not Disabled’

May 1, 2023

Order partners with Kraków-based organization to care for Ukrainian refugees with disabilities

By Mateusz Solarz

May 1, 2023

A Klika volunteer chats with a guest during a picnic in July 2022. (Screenshot / Knights of Columbus Supreme Council YouTube)

In the best of circumstances, many people with disabilities need daily support and assistance. Imagine yourself in their place if a war breaks out and you are forced to flee, or you are prevented from escape and remain in constant peril.

Before the Russian invasion Feb. 24, 2022, approximately 2.7 million people with disabilities lived in Ukraine. Thousands crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border almost immediately, desperately seeking safety and care.

“Disabled people were often evacuated in the same way as others — unexpectedly, and they suddenly arrived in Poland without anything,” said Grzegorz Sotoła, president of Klika, or the Catholic Association of People with Disabilities and Their Friends, which has provided care for people with disabilities in Kraków, Poland, for more than 50 years.

Through the Order’s Ukraine Solidarity Fund^®, the Knights of Columbus has partnered with Klika to provide care for disabled refugees living in Poland and to bring humanitarian aid to those who remain suffering in Ukraine’s war zones.

“We are grateful for what we have managed to do together with the Knights to support people with disabilities,” said Sotoła. “Amid circumstances as tragic as war, only interpersonal cooperation and reaching a hand to a neighbor can change the world for the better.”

UNIQUELY PREPARED

In Poland’s communist past, disability was a taboo subject, and people with disabilities were often hidden away. Those living in the upper stories of apartment buildings often did not leave their homes for many years.

Klika was established in 1971 to affirm the human dignity of disabled people and change these degrading conditions. Emerging from the student ministry at the Dominican monastery in Kraków, it was spurred by the energy of young people and their willingness to care for the vulnerable.

The movement began with university students helping people with disabilities to attend Mass on Sunday and to take simple strolls. The organized walks eventually turned into holiday camps and retreats away from the city.

“Today, the aim is to help disabled people to take up a job in the free market and manage independently in life,” said Sotoła, who uses a wheelchair himself. “Klika is a place where people with disabilities can realize their plans and dreams.”

Klika helps people with disabilities receive an education by transporting them to schools and universities, coordinating treatment and rehabilitation, and supporting artistic projects and workshops.

“Dreams are not disabled,” affirmed Grażyna Aondo-Akaa, an academic lecturer and social sciences scholar focused on disability. A Klika volunteer for nearly 20 years, she was instrumental in establishing the K of C-Klika partnership to assist Ukrainian refugees.

“The association is based not on pity, but on friendship,” emphasized Aondo-Akaa. “We see every person, regardless of their condition, as someone with value, as a human being whom we can befriend,” she said.

Last year, the scope of Klika’s activities suddenly expanded, as the association opened its doors wider to care for disabled victims of war.

“Help was urgently needed the day after the Russian invasion,” Sotoła recalled. “We knew that the first refugees would be mothers with children and people with disabilities, and the Knights of Columbus quickly responded with generous support for our efforts.”

A donation from the Ukraine Solidarity Fund^® provided support to an intervention center near Kraków, where disabled refugees could apply for needed supplies, arrange assistance for treatment and rehabilitation, and find respite while awaiting a new residence.

The Order also collaborated with the Canadian Wheelchair Foundation to provide wheelchairs for those in need and sponsored two summer camps organized by Klika for disabled refugees from Ukraine.

Tomasz Adamski (left) and Janusz Zebro, members of Blessed Father Michał Sopocko Council 17667 in Kraków, visit participants in a Klika art class. — Tomasz Adamski (left) and Janusz Zebro, members of Blessed Father Michał Sopocko Council 17667 in Kraków, visit participants in a Klika art class in February. (Photo by Sebastian Nycz)

“We knew that so many people with disabilities who had to be evacuated from Ukraine would find it very difficult to find themselves in Poland,” said Szymon Czyszek, the Order’s director for international growth in Europe. “We saw the partnership with Klika as a key way to respond to their needs.”

Tomasz Adamski, who serves as financial secretary of Blessed Father Michał Sopoćko Council 17667 at Kraków’s Divine Mercy Shrine, is among the Knights who have visited the refugees being served by Klika. “Visiting a center run by Klika, you see that this association is not about big words, but big deeds,” he said. “Day after day, they practice openness, friendship and charity. I believe that this experience equipped and uniquely prepared the association to provide its fearless assistance in this time of crisis.”

‘NOTHING IS THE SAME ANYMORE’

The number of disabled refugees from Ukraine turned out to be far fewer than initially expected, and the conclusion was painfully obvious: Many people with disabilities were unable to evacuate. As a result, a decision was made to organize help in Ukraine.

Last July, Grażyna Aondo-Akaa traveled to Ukraine for a month to join Kamil Moskal, a Klika volunteer who had been helping people with disabilities since the outset of the war. Shortly after the shelling of Zhytomyr, a city 140 kilometers west of Kyiv, Kamil helped to organize the evacuation of disabled people and their caregivers.

The scenes were painful and traumatic.

“Some were imprisoned in their own homes or abandoned by their loved ones, who in some cases ran away or simply died,” Grażyna recounted at the time. “These people are alone and rely on neighbors of good will. … When you see scenes like this, nothing is the same anymore.”

Grażyna later rejoined Kamil in Kharkiv, and from there, they regularly embarked to look for more disabled and elderly people in need. As Christmas approached for Orthodox Christians in early January, they organized deliveries of traditional Ukrainian Christmas dishes and small gifts for children. “We wanted to give people a little bit of Christmas — to leave a ray of light and hope,” said Grażyna.

However, traveling in a war zone carries great risk. On Jan. 6, during the Christmas cease-fire, Kamil and Grażyna were shot at while unloading a transport of food and holiday treats at one of the “centers of invincibility” in Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine. An artillery shell hit a block of apartments 100 feet away, and Grażyna was severely injured. Shrapnel pierced her left knee, shattering the joint, and her right foot was torn off.

“The association is based not on pity, but on friendship. We see every person, regardless of their condition, as someone with value, as a human being whom we can befriend.”

“I felt an overpowering pain in my left leg,” Grażyna recalled. “I couldn’t feel anything in my right leg except blood flowing out; I was unable to move.”

Kamil miraculously avoided major injuries and, despite being in the line of fire, managed to treat Grażyna’s wounds with tourniquets and gauze while calling out for help.

“I had no right to survive that. Kamil saved my life,” said Grażyna, who was transported to a hospital in Pavlohrad, a three-hour drive away.

“Fortunately, I slept through the amputation of my right leg,” she said, “But not during the insertion of Kirschner wires [to stabilize the bones] in my left one.”

Grażyna returned to Poland and is learning how to walk with a prosthetic leg at the hospital in Kraków. After years of caring for persons with disabilities, she has become one herself.

Indeed, she is now more confident than ever that her place is with the people she was forced to leave.

“I want to continue to give myself for others,” she said. “The fact that it is difficult for me does not obscure my perspective that there are still people who are in more difficult situations.”

The dedication of volunteers like Grażyna and Kamil reflects the words of Dominican Father Jan Andrzej Kłoczowski, a philosopher and theologian involved in Klika’s early work in the 1970s and ’80s. The association, he said, “helped people realize that Christianity cannot be content with its spiritual perfection, but that the evangelical life expresses itself in the service to others.”

As long as volunteers continue to bring hope to the most vulnerable, the mission of Klika will continue.

“Young people have been coming here for 50 years, eager to help others and eager to get involved,” said Grzegorz Sotoła, the group’s president. “We trust that the Lord will continue to bless us and allow us to operate 50 years more.”

*****

MATEUSZ SOLARZ writes from Kraków, Poland.

Chana Gaskins and her three children enjoy some time playing outside.

‘Dreams Are Not Disabled’

UNIQUELY PREPARED

‘NOTHING IS THE SAME ANYMORE’

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