WARSAW, Poland — An Indiana woman has spent the last two weeks at the Polish border helping refugees and studying the massive humanitarian effort going on there.
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn, the director of Indiana University's Center for Refugee Studies, studies what happens when people are forced from their homes during war. She's been on the ground before and she's back again — this time helping some of the nearly 3.5 million men, women and children who have fled Ukraine since Russia began invading.
She told 13News the first thing families are getting when they cross the border is food and a SIM card so they can use their phone in Poland. Then, they're bussed to transit centers and picked up by volunteers who are finding them places to stay.
"There are a significant number [of refugees] in Warsaw — a quarter of a million," she said. "Many are also going to Germany, but others going to Finland, Britain and the Czech Republic."
She said, unlike other world humanitarian efforts, everything here is being done by volunteers.
"There are grandmas hauling big vats of soup to the refugee centers so they can feed you soup," she said. "Volunteer firefighters, volunteer kindergarten teachers coming in to help the kids. It has been a miracle to see what the Polish people have done to help the Ukrainians and it's all been done by local volunteers charging nothing."
Dunn said the biggest challenge will be finding the millions of refugees long-term housing.
She said it will be years before those families will be able to return to Ukraine, if they return at all.
