Sun Days on Orcas | Kate Jewell is headed to Poland

This Thursday, March 31, Kate Jewell will be headed to Oświęcim, Poland, for six weeks to help Ukrainian refugees and orphans with One Humanity Institute and Airline Ambassadors International.

Kate Jewell

Kate was a flight attendant for 37 years, so traveling the world and living a life of adventure is normal for her. As is helping people when catastrophes happen.

Airline Ambassadors International is a program that concentrates on missions, medical escorts, and trafficking training, and Kate has been working with them for decades. Her first experience in 1978 with an immunization team in Nepal changed her life.

After the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, she started a volunteer program there and even has a grandson named Abhaya who was her on-the-ground coordinator. After working together and getting very close in a familial way, Abhaya asked, “I don’t have a grandmother; would you be my grandmother?”

“I don’t have children, so it was the best yes I ever said.”

Kate also volunteered immediately in Lesbos when Syrian refugees were flooding into Greece.

When Putin started invading Ukraine, Kate jumped into action. “After hearing about it, I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’” She began making blue and yellow ribbons as shirt and jacket pins in support of Ukraine, and she decided she would fly there and pitch in.

It doesn’t matter that Kate doesn’t speak the language and has never been to Poland. Tragedies like this are in her blood. Her grandfather was Jewish and her mother fled Nazi Germany, so it’s only appropriate that she will be working in the city center of Oświęcim – or as we would call it, Auschwitz.

Kate isn’t a stranger to personal horror either. When she was 38 years old, she fell in love with a naturopathic doctor and shared a practice with him. As the years went by, his manipulative nature began to overtake her and she realized she needed to get out of the relationship. He threatened to kill her several times, but the last time he said it, he meant it. After being tied up, beaten, and repeatedly raped, Kate managed to get free. She fled naked into the night and traveled as far as she could to get away from him. That’s how she eventually ended up on Orcas Island. Her story became national news on all the major outlets, and author Ann Rule, known for her book The Stranger Beside Me, about being a coworker with Ted Bundy at a crisis hotline, wrote a book called Mortal Danger featuring Kate’s story. Kate’s attacker is no longer alive; several years ago he killed a woman and then killed himself.

Danger and tragedy cause Kate to click right into help mode. She has no idea how to do what she will need to do when she arrives in Poland. She has no idea where the resources will come from, or how to organize endless refugees. But the unknowns aren’t stopping her, especially seeing as there are already 100,000 orphans and knowing that the child trafficking trade is skyrocketing there.

One Humanity Institute reached out to Airline Ambassadors International to bring Teddy bears to the Ukrainian children in Poland.

Nina Meyerhof (in pink), Founder of One Humanity Institute, is standing with the children she’s just gifted with Teddy bears at the Poland-Ukraine border.

Kate has major administrative and organizational goals with One Humanity Institute. Her aim is to set up a template and a framework for people who want to volunteer, knowing that the consequences of this conflict will be far-reaching and affect millions of Ukrainians and the Polish citizens welcoming them for decades, even generations.

Operations will begin inside a bakery in the city center of Oświęcim that was donated to One Humanity Institute. Only two other Americans will be meeting her there, plus some other volunteers flying in from places around the world. They plan to turn the bakery into a welcome center and eventually it will house refugees.

The abandoned bakery donated to One World Humanity to be renovated into a welcome center and transit accommodations as “The House of Hope” in Oświęcim (Auschwitz), Poland.

She knows that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It will take a massive effort to figure out how to house people permanently, feed them, find jobs for them, arrange for children to continue in their education, care for emotional and physical traumas, and organize circulating teams of volunteers to carry on the work.

Regardless of the unknowns, Kate is dedicated to serving in whatever way she can. “My only red lines are if Putin invades Poland or starts a nuclear war. I have a pink line if he starts chemical warfare.”

Kate swims each morning at the Orcas Island Fitness Center. “I meditate when I swim, and someday I’d like to write a novel called Just Do It Anyway. I don’t know how I’m going to do any of this, but I’m doing it anyway. There are a lot of cooks in this broth and no one knows what the sauce is. But if we wait around until we figure out what to do, we won’t do it. There are too many ‘What if?s’.” Kate laughingly adds, “I thought I’d start the book in Poland in my ‘spare’ time.”

If you would like to lend your support, Kate has personally designed blue and yellow beaded bracelets with one brown bead on each one signifying Ukraine’s sunflower, which has become a symbol around the world for solidarity and peace, and a sign of resistance to Putin’s invasion. If you would like one of these bracelets by donation at Tidepool Coffeehouse, all proceeds will help the Ukrainian people.

Kate also plans to bring T-shirts and cards from an organization called Angels of Hope – Love is Real that say “You are not alone” in Ukrainian. In addition, Days for Girls International is sending her reusable menstrual kits to give to the girls and women she encounters. The founder and CEO of Days for Girls, Celeste Mergens, is a resident of Mount Vernon. Kate says that Celeste’s work in Ghana “was instrumental in making it illegal to continue doing female circumcisions there.”

For more information on bracelets, donating, volunteering, or to follow Kate’s journey starting this Thursday, go to her Facebook page here where she will post regular updates.

For more on One Humanity Institute, go here.

For more on Airline Ambassadors International, go here.