Four years ago, a group of four friends in small-town New Hampshire watched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine unfold and faced a question that has confronted people around the world during times of war and human suffering: What can one ordinary person possibly do?
For Steve Rand and George Bald, the answer was to start somewhere. Then keep going.
Rand is a Rotarian, third-generation family hardware store owner, and co-founder of Common Man for Ukraine. Bald is an advisory board member for the organization.
The two will visit Estes Park during a tour of cities in the American West to share the story of how a small-town grassroots humanitarian effort grew into an international network delivering millions of pounds of food and supplies and providing trauma counseling to Ukrainian children and mothers grieving family members killed in the war.
“We’re common men from this little dinky town in Plymouth, New Hampshire, which is about the same size as your town,” said Rand in an interview with the Estes Valley Voice. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of Plymouth was 6,682. The population of the Town of Estes Park was 5,904, and the estimated population of the Estes Valley is just under 12,000.
Common Man for Ukraine was born after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Rand and co-founders Susan Mathison, Alex Ray, and Lisa Mure wanted to help, but there was no established international relief organization or ready-made roadmap for responding to a war in Ukraine. So they built one.
Rand owns a family hardware business. Mathison is retired from the U.S. Forest Service. Ray founded The Common Man family of restaurants. Mure is a public health consultant. What they shared was a refusal to stand by.
Inspired by Rotary International’s principle of “service above self,” the four friends began reaching out to contacts and building relationships. Their effort became an initiative of the Plymouth Rotary Foundation and developed a partnership with the Zamosc Ordynacky Rotary Club in Poland.
Today, the volunteer-run organization provides humanitarian aid and trauma counseling to Ukrainian children, displaced families, and others struggling to survive the war.
Convoys carrying food — and hope
One of Common Man for Ukraine’s most visible efforts is its humanitarian aid convoys.
Several times a year, the organization’s co-founders travel to Poland and Ukraine, working with Rotary partners to move food and critical supplies to orphanages, child safe houses, and communities in need.
The organization provides participating orphanages and safe houses with roughly a 40-day supply of nonperishable food on a rotating basis.
The numbers tell one part of the story: More than 4 million pounds of food. Some 10,000 sleeping bags. Hundreds of generators used to provide power and heat.
This past March, the organization completed 15 humanitarian trips to the region. It is preparing for another trip soon. Working with Polish Rotary partners, the broader effort has conducted more than 50 convoys, including deliveries to villages and safe houses near the front lines.
Videos documenting the convoys show the scale and logistics of moving food and humanitarian supplies across borders and into a war-torn country.
But they also reveal something more personal — volunteers meeting the people who will receive the aid and returning again and again to communities living with the daily uncertainty of war.
The organization’s work began largely with the immediate needs its volunteers could see, said Rand, including hungry children, cold buildings, and safe houses struggling to maintain electricity.
As the trips continued, another crisis became impossible to ignore. The children were carrying wounds that could not be treated with food or generators.
A place to begin healing
Common Man for Ukraine now operates the Children of Ukraine Health Retreat in Zakopane, Poland, a three-week residential trauma counseling program for Ukrainian children who have lost at least one parent in the war.
Each monthly session brings together about 30 to 35 children, ages 8 to 16. The children arrive as strangers but share a devastating connection. They know what it means to lose a parent to war.
At the retreat, certified teachers, doctors, and counselors provide individual and group counseling, art and nature therapy, physical activity, and time for free play. The program is intentionally designed to give children a respite from the war zone and an opportunity to build relationships with peers who understand their grief. Common Man for Ukraine says the retreat has served more than 1,600 Ukrainian children since the full-scale invasion began.
The organization’s video, “Starting to heal: Children of Ukraine Health Retreat,” offers a window into that work. Children draw, play outdoors, talk, and spend time together. The program does not pretend that three weeks can erase the trauma of war. Instead, it offers a beginning.
Working with Rotary partners in Poland, the retreats bring together children who have never met but have endured similar losses, giving them a chance to speak with counselors and simply be with other children who understand their experience.
One mother told Rand that the retreat had “given her back her child.” Before the retreat, the child refused to talk about her grief. After receiving support and learning she was not alone, she asked her mother if they could visit her father’s grave.
Helping mothers carry their grief
The organization’s work has expanded again. Common Man for Ukraine now also supports weeklong trauma retreats for small groups of Ukrainian mothers whose husbands have been killed in the war.
The need became increasingly apparent as volunteers saw mothers attempting to hold families together while carrying their own grief.
The Mothers Retreat program, launched in 2025, focuses on widows, including mothers of children who participate in the youth trauma retreats. The retreats are another evolution of a mission that began with food.
With every trip, the four co-founders say the needs of Ukraine’s children and families have grown in both scope and complexity. Feeding children led volunteers into safe houses. Delivering generators exposed the challenges of surviving winter and power outages. Spending time with children revealed the profound psychological toll of losing parents and living through years of war.
Each need led to another question. And each question led the volunteers to build another response. None of it, the organization says, would be possible without the support of thousands of American individuals, organizations, and Rotary clubs across the country.
Rand and Bald’s visit to Estes Park will bring the story of that effort to a community with its own strong Rotary tradition.
The July 22 presentation at 4 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall at Presbyterian Community Church of the Rockies, 1700 Brodie Ave., is an opportunity to hear firsthand what happens when a group of ordinary people from a small town decide that being ordinary is not an excuse for doing nothing.
The event is sponsored by the Estes Park Noon Rotary Club and facilitated by its International Service Committee.
You must be logged in to post a comment.