6 September 2022
Wellbeing SA worker Justyna Rosa spent four weeks in April and May volunteering in her former Polish hometown of Krakow, working to help feed and shelter the tens of thousands of Ukraine refugees who fled the war across the border.
The cramped conditions and lack of hygiene meant COVID, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases were rife. But, having successfully steered clear of numerous nasty bugs in crowded tent shelters, it was an itsy-bitsy spider which proved her undoing on her return back home in SA.
“I was collecting wood from the shed (in Clare) when something crawled up my arm … it led to a staph infection and I ended up in hospital for a few days,” Ms Rosa told online newspaper InDaily.
Ms Rosa, the subject of an ANMF (SA Branch) INPractice magazine story in July, told us the legacy of the war on Ukraine would take generations "at least" for the national psyche to overcome, with the impact of Russia's invasion on the children beyond heart-breaking.
She continues to raise funds in excess of $58,000 through her GoFundMe website to support Ukraine refugees, the vast bulk of them being women and children. In a call to arms, most Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 60 were banned from leaving their homeland and compelled to defend their country.
Read her story from July’s INPractice magazine
here.