SOPOT, Poland. There’s volunteerism, and then there’s the extraordinary thing Jakub Osipow is preparing to do.
With assistance from credit unions in the U.S. and Poland, Osipow is getting ready to drive a refurbished “ambulance” more than one-thousand kilometers from Poland to the front lines of the war being waged in eastern Ukraine with Russia. There, he plans to not just help ferry injured soldiers to hospitals in Ukraine, but as a highly trained EMT to also train Ukrainians in some of the basics of first aid for trauma victims, saying he has personally watched as lives were lost as the result of giving poor help to those who needed it and too much to those for whom it was too late.
Osipow’s ambulance is a refurbished Toyota Land Cruiser that has been purchased with assistance from the Via Stella Foundation, a joint effort between credit unions in the U.S. and Poland.