Created in 2012 on the border of Poland and Ukraine by Ewa and members of her family, the Medical Mission Foundation, Misja Medyczna in Polish (misjamedyczna.org), is helping the Ukrainian people by providing medical care and clothing, but also by repatriating injured children and adults to France in order to provide them with appropriate care.
All the employees and members of the Maïsadour Group have shown a mobilization that has gone far beyond what was hoped for. Donations of medicines, dressings, syringes, blankets, wheelchairs and crutches can be counted in the hundreds, with almost 30 m³ collected, thanks to everyone’s mobilization!
Meet Ewa when she came to Maïsadour’s headquarters.
Maïsadour : How did you organize the collection with Maïsadour ?
Ewa Dzieduszycki: At Maïsadour, I contacted Jean-Luc Blanc-Simon, Executive Vice President, through my husband Guillaume, who is a Maïsadour member.
We have such a large stock of medicines at home. Our prescriptions often exceed our needs. We all have unused medication or unused medical equipment. All we need to do is clean out our closets and get rid of our unused surplus already stored at home. My children tell me that in addition to a humanitarian gesture, we also perform an ecological act by avoiding that all
these medicines go to waste. Thanks to this first “sorting”, several vans of medicines have already been sent to Ukraine.
M: What role do companies and communities play in helping you?
E.D: Companies and local authorities play a role of relay, thanks to their internal network. Thanks to them, we can reach a large public that we could not reach alone.
Secondly, these players have an extraordinary logistical role. Maïsadour, for example, has put its resources into action to help us, by first centralizing the collection before handing it over to us. Everyone, whether an employee or a member, was able to make a contribution easily when they went to their workplace or to a Cooperative site.
Lastly, these organizations are a sign of confidence in our actions. Maïsadour is a pillar and a major player in the department and the region. If the Group participates in this collection, it is because there is a guarantee of what will happen to it and who will receive it. People are often suspicious, and rightly so, when they give.
M: What is the feeling of the Ukrainian population after a year of conflict?
E.D: We were in Ukraine two weeks ago. For the first time, I felt exhaustion, a terrible fatigue among the population. It is not discouragement: there is no doubt about the desire of the people to continue the fight, they are still as determined to win. But the warlike enthusiasm of the beginning has become tenacity.
The Ukrainian economy is based on one third of its area and population. The remaining two thirds are devastated. The population lives from day to day, even from hour to hour. We go forward as we go along, without thinking about the future, otherwise we go crazy.
This is why they need support all the more. Beyond what’s inside, each box that arrives means that the rest of the world is thinking of them and mobilizing for them. Each box is a proof of moral and material support: it has a value of hope.
M: What is the specificity of the rural areas where this collection is going?
E.D: These rural areas are huge and sparsely populated. They are often regions where people are left to their own devices, with very limited access to health care, because the main humanitarian organizations are located in the cities.
The situation is even worse near the fighting. You have to imagine a zone 2,000 km wide and 150 km deep where the front line passes and passes again and again. There, it is impossible to enter a field, because all are full of mines or unexploded shells. The farmer who climbs on his tractor risks at any moment to be victim of it.
Everywhere you look, you see fields of sunflowers or corn that are rotting because they have not been picked. For an agricultural cooperative like Maïsadour, I think these are common and understandable concerns, even 3,000 km away.
M: When can we give?
E.D.: You can continue to donate whenever you want, especially to partner town halls (Saint-Pierre-du-Mont and Grenade-sur-l’Adour for the Landes). We plan to make a network of collection points at the end of March and beginning of April. We have to keep up with the logistics, it is not easy with the sorting and packaging.
