GoFundMe nears $500K to support local man’s efforts to help Ukrainian orphans

A Las Vegas man is using his nonprofit to help Ukrainian orphans during that country’s war with Russia.

Mark Davis and the nonprofit, Abundance International, have raised nearly $475,000 through a GoFundMe account in the two weeks since Russian forces launched its invasion into the country on Feb. 24.

Davis, the founding director of the nonprofit, runs his organization in Mykolaiv and Kherson, providing support to two orphanages in the country’s southern region between Crimea and Odessa, he said during a Zoom call with the Review-Journal.

In previous years, the volunteer-run Abundance International raised about $50,000 or less annually and used those funds to support the two “baby houses,” or orphanages for children from infants to 4 years old, with diapers and other childcare needs, as well as birthing centers and physical therapy rooms, Davis said. But the invasion led Davis to expand Abundance International’s work to offer critical support for as many orphanages in the country as possible, he said.

“Two weeks ago today, we would not have anticipated what we’re having to deal with,” Davis said during the Wednesday call. “And the sad story is that our orphanage in Kherson is now in Russian territory. For a week, we could not get ahold of the doctor, who’s the director, to even find out if they’re OK.”

The director reached out Tuesday to say everyone in the Kherson orphanage is OK, Davis said. The children are staying in a local church’s basement to use as a bomb shelter.

Davis, an entrepreneur, first got involved with volunteering at orphanages when working in Ukraine in the 2000s. He met and married a Ukrainian woman and began spending about six months out of the year in the country. In recent years, he’s been in the country for about nine months out of the year, traveling back to the U.S. for the holidays to visit family from the Bay Area and take his son to Mount Charleston and Red Rock Canyon, he said.

He returned to his home base of Mykolaiv in mid-January, he said. As tensions increased along the Ukraine-Russia border, many advised him to leave. But Davis said he felt compelled to stay and help the orphanages operate and keep the attention on some of the country’s most vulnerable — about a third of the orphanage’s population is disabled.

“I feel that it’s one of those things that’s a calling,” he said. “I’m here at the right place, the right time. It’s a given to me. Before the war happened, I go, ‘You know what? I’m not going home. I don’t want to sit on the couch with a big screen TV watching as my people are in the middle of it.’”

Davis said the group is wiring funds from GoFundMe donations every day to orphanage staff or nearby volunteers to buy food, diapers and other essentials. He’s unsure of how long such funding can last because he’s expanded the nonprofit’s reach to other orphanages across the country and is now in contact with about 10 other care centers.

“We’re just going to do the most good that we can and as far as it lasts, we’ll continue to support those,” he said, borrowing from the Salvation Army’s slogan.

Staff at the orphanages attempt to keep the children’s days as normal as possible by staying on the typical routine that includes education, play time, physical therapy and more. But disruptions come when air raid sirens go off, he said.

“You watch the nurses and nannies with a kid in each arm, running down the hallway to take them down to the bomb shelter,” he said. “Then they run up and grab another couple and bring them down again. The trauma that just goes through the kids is like, ‘What’s going on? Why are we running? Why is everybody freaking out?’ That’s the big disruptor. We just pray for normalcy. We want to see this become calm again and stabilized, and who knows when that’s going to happen.”

McKenna Ross is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Contact her at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on Twitter.