Maria Galbo wandered amid the decaying walls of a Soviet-era apartment in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. She stepped into the living room and pulled open the door to the terrace. Warm, humid air poured in. The piercing call of an air raid siren invaded the room, reverberating through the entire aging structure. This was the second apartment she’d been to that morning.
Later, she visited a shelter where refugees from the Russian invasion to the east were staying. Disabled older adults cried as they shared their stories with her, many having spent the last six months moving from shelter to shelter, living off donated groceries and crowded into churches, gymnasiums and schools.
Galbo listened to their stories and copied their information into a spreadsheet on her laptop. She spent the next week traveling all over the city to find permanent housing for them before the looming winter swept the country.
Galbo isn’t from Ukraine. She moved to the U.S. from Russia in 2001, and has been living in the Bay Area for nine years. She traveled to Ukraine from her home in Albany, temporarily leaving behind her family and her tech job to provide relief to refugees.
“My friend’s mom died through this ordeal. She had dementia, and she was in Bucha when they had this horrible situation,” Galbo recalled. “The doctors and nurses only took people who could walk, and those who couldn’t move remained there. By the time transportation came, they were already hungry and neglected.”
She tag-teams with her husband, Yevgeniy Sverdlik, so someone is always home to support their two children. As of December, Galbo and Sverdlik have made a combined seven trips to Ukraine to volunteer.
Galbo's first trip was back in March of 2022, right after the start of the Russian invasion, and she worked with volunteer organizations to provide financial aid to refugees fleeing across the Polish border. However, after evacuations at the border died down, Galbo realized that those in direst need were the older refugees still in the country.
That summer, Galbo started her own organization, Under a Kind Roof. She began raising money in the Bay Area and abroad to provide financial help to neglected older adults in Ukraine.
“It was so painful for all of us to watch the elderly people suffer, those who don’t have relatives to help them,” Galbo said. “So we decided, let’s try to help.”
Galbo created a survey and distributed it among shelters in Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk. With the responses, she created a spreadsheet of refugees’ information. Then she created a priority list to match refugees with available housing. Every month or so, she travels to Ukraine and links up with a team of volunteers who work to find available housing in cities like Chernivtsi, which have high volumes of older refugees.
But finding housing is challenging. Accommodation is already in short supply, and the infrastructure in many Ukrainian towns suffers from decay and neglect. To protect older adults from poor living conditions, Galbo and her team personally visit available apartments. Potential homes are often disqualified for water damage, mold and even landlords with apparent substance use issues.
Still, safe shelters do appear. Galbo’s team makes sure a potential candidate is a good fit, then shows them the space and leases it for three to six months on their behalf. This can be lifesaving for older adults: An insulated shelter and a warm bed can be the difference between life and death.
“Giving them a home is giving them hope,” Galbo said. “We see that they start building little homes and getting attached to the new places.”
Galbo completed her second trip under her new organization in October, and has been back in the Bay Area preparing for her next trip. The Russian and Ukrainian community in the Bay Area has been a keystone of the fundraising efforts, with volunteer bakers providing thousands of dollars worth of pastries for bake sales in San Francisco, raising over $10,000 for Under a Kind Roof.
Galbo plans to continue growing Under a Kind Roof by expanding volunteer opportunities and financial aid. With the help of her husband and her team, she is working tirelessly to continue providing support to the nearly 40 people in her program while continuing to enroll new participants as the war continues.
"I want everybody to just constantly mind that the war is still on right now, more than ever. It’s wintertime. It's blackouts," she said. "People have no electricity, no heat, there’s bombings, and there’s no housing."
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