What would you do if your Walter Mitty daydreams became real and you had a chance to do something good?
Upneet Kaur Bassi didn’t hesitate. When the Sikh humanitarian group Khalsa Aid Canada asked for volunteers to help Ukrainian refugees in Poland, the 32-year-old’s arm shot up. “Before I knew it, I was booked on a flight.”
That was Sunday. On Thursday, she’ll leave Victoria to join five other 91原创s for a week-long stint with a Khalsa Aid operation in which Ukrainians driven out by war are transitioning from the border area to a 7,000-bed facility in Warsaw.
With only four days’ lead time, Bassi has been scrambling to prepare. “My cousin married a Polish girl, so I called her and said: ‘Tell me how to say thank you, sorry and bathroom.’ ”
The details of her duties remain fuzzy, but that doesn’t deter her. “I’m going to arrive ready to work,” she says. “I will do exactly what is asked of me.”
Even with the uncertainty involved in diving into a dynamic situation, Bassi, who is working on a master’s degree at UVic, didn’t hesitate.
Many of us, while watching television news images of the world going sideways, might idly toy with the idea of stepping up to help — “I often think ‘I want to do something,’ ” Bassi said Tuesday — but how many would actually take the leap should the opportunity present itself?
Doing so, reacting to a crisis with some form of tangible action, is a powerful impulse for some people. It took 91原创 Islanders less than two weeks to fill a shipping container with medical supplies bound for Poland.
Colwood’s Lia Butler found donating money wasn’t enough, that she needed to do something more hands-on, so she has spent the past month making perogies that she sells to raise money that she sends to Kyiv, where she was a child.
Hundreds of 91原创 Island families have declared themselves willing to take in Ukrainians seeking shelter in Canada.
We’re gradually getting clarity regarding the latter process. At Victoria’s Ukrainian Cultural Centre on Tuesday, office manager Victoria Grando said they were told Ottawa will pay the airfare of Ukrainians coming to Canada under a newly introduced emergency-travel authorization.
Such people will also have their medical costs covered once here. Same goes for the cost of quarantining them for two weeks after their arrival at three designated airports in 91原创, Toronto and Montreal, Grando said.
Note, she said, that Ottawa is only paying those bills for those arriving under the emergency-travel measures. Those arriving on visitor visas are still on the hook for their own costs.
The cultural centre asks that those interested in hosting refugees no longer register at ukrainehelpvi.ca, the umbrella site for all things Ukraine-related on the Island.
Instead, people wanting to house Ukrainians, offer them jobs, act as translators or provide other services should go to the Ukrainian 91原创 Congress’s website at and click on the red I WANT TO HELP button.
Some of that help will be coming via Khalsa Aid, the group with which Bassi is volunteering. The international organization has been leaping into humanitarian crises since 1999, when it was formed in Britain.
Its first project involved aid for people who had fled war-torn Kosovo for Albania. Since then, it has waded into such places as Kenya and Madagascar during a famine, Indonesia following a tsunami, and Iraq after Syrians fleeing war in their homeland settled there.
Among the group’s founders in Britain was Jindi Singh, who now lives in Victoria and serves as the 91原创 body’s national director.
During the pandemic, the Victoria chapter of Khalsa Aid provided groceries to people isolated by quarantines or who simply felt too vulnerable to leave their homes.
Drawing on a volunteer base of 100, the local group also provided meals to local first responders and sent aid to food banks. Through the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre, it provided culturally appropriate food to 200 families who came here from around the world.
It has directed help to such groups as the Victoria Women’s Transition House, the 1Up Single Parent Resource Centre and the Threshold Housing Society.
Late last year, the Victoria chapter combined with the Helijet-connected Helicopters Without Borders to rush 1,600 pounds of produce and 1,700 pounds of milk to an Indigenous community isolated by the devastating storms that washed out highways and railways in the B.C. Interior.
All this is rooted in the Sikh belief in equality and unity, and in the concept of nishkam — selfless service — that is central to the faith.
Time to step up.
