Retirees Tim and Gretchen Teran knew they were fortunate. They are in good health and have lots of time on their hands. But they didn’t know how to share their blessings with others. And then they found Plebeian Helpers. The nonprofit volunteer group brings humanitarian aid to those in need, especially the people of Ukraine. Good at Heart host Randye Kaye spoke with Tim and Gretchen about how Plebeian Helpers support Ukrainians enduring the ongoing war in their country.
WSHU: Hi, I'm Randy Kay, and this is Good at Heart Conversations with people who quietly make the world better. Today's guests were nominated by our own Brian Scott Smith. They are Tim and Gretchen Teran. Welcome to Good at Heart.
Tim and Gretchen Teran: Thank you. We're glad to be here.
WSHU: So let me start, and Tim or Gretchen, you guys can figure out who goes first, but I just want to start with who you help, and how?
TT: We are called Plebeian Helpers. We are a grassroots organization that was really formed in 2022, just after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And our whole mission is simple. It's dedicated to helping the people who've been affected by Russia's war of aggression, and I use those words purposely because that's truly what it is.
WSHU: And how do you do that, Gretchen?
GT: Well, this was such a great question, because it gave us an opportunity to reflect on the evolution over the last four years. For example, we started going into Krakow, where the majority of refugees found themselves coming over the border from Ukraine, and what we essentially did as volunteers was go in at our own cost to help the refugees find food, find shelter, the basic necessities. We've moved further afield since then. We provided plus 60 generators in this brutal winter, which was just a hideous, hideous time between the war and the bitter cold, and we've helped to build playgrounds, to build shelters for the veterans, their families, and to help psychologically with some of their children as well.
TT: To give you just a perspective, a little context, I think, Russia's war against Ukraine is quite literally the largest war in Europe since World War Two, in terms of the number of casualties, both civilian as well as military. You know, as of May of this year, 20% of Ukraine is now occupied by Russia. The impact on humanity is quite literally devastating. 8 million Ukrainians have been displaced in the country, and 67 million have left the country.
WSHU: So, but why did you tell us your story? Like, why does this matter to you? Why did you say I'm going to do something about this?
GT: There are a lot of things that we can do. I mean, we're very healthy retirees, and we knew that there's a global, globally, pick a, pick a country, any country. It just seemed as though the Ukrainian story was something…it melted our hearts, and we were given an opportunity. It was handed right to us by the co-founder of Plebeian Helpers. He is absolutely dedicated to the Ukrainian effort, and we were able to jump on his bandwagon, and it just moved us.
TT: And what's remarkable, I think, is that you know we started working with them, and you're right that we are incorporated in New York because of him and his wife starting this program. But when we started doing conversations and presentations in Connecticut, in Lyme, and in Haddam. All of a sudden, we discovered all of these other people who were interested, wanted to help, some Ukrainian, some professors, some not. And so we've now developed a whole new cadre of people in Connecticut who are now joining Plebeian Helpers and literally volunteering their time, their effort, and their money to come and help us. Because we do this all volunteer. One of the wonderful things about this group, and why we joined it, is that there is no overhead. There are no salaries. Every dollar we get where we invest goes directly to making a difference, which is an unusual thing, and kind of why I think we're proud that Charity Navigator gave us a four-star rating. All that money goes towards the Ukrainians, not towards overhead.
WSHU: Wow, and so you know, I notice it's Plebeian Helpers.com not.org Does that mean it's not a nonprofit, or just because it's all volunteer?
TT: It's what we could get for the domain?
WSHU: And what is the founder’s name?
TT: Joe and Beth Cyr are the two founders, and they live in Babylon. He’s an international lawyer, negotiator by background, which is an incredibly useful skill to have. You know, in order to make sure that everything we do makes a difference, we are very, very on top of what our local agents in the field do for us when we're not there. Because we fund things when we're not in Poland or Ukraine, we want to make sure there is no overhead, no funny business, and that all the dollars get spent on the refugees and the displaced.
WSHU: Wow! And I imagine that, as you say, healthy retirees have a lot of opportunities to volunteer and help. They're all over the place. So why this one? Why did this strike your heart?
GT: You know, for me personally, I didn't know where to begin. And in my working career, I've had friends, older bosses who said we're going to join the senior Peace Corps. We're going to go to Africa and do this, or that, or the other thing, and all of these are amazing efforts, but this one, honestly, Randy, this was just handed to us on a silver platter. And by nature of that, we'd love to hand it to other people on silver platters, because people really want to do something, they just don't know where to begin. That was the situation we were in, and we are absolutely blessed with good health and tons of time. So we're used to being worker bees, so we're happy to, yeah, we're really happy to do it with Plebeian Helpers.
WSHU: That's so wonderful, and it is true. Sometimes, when you're just open, the right opportunity just falls in your lap, and you can focus your energy on how you want to spend your time. I imagine you've been to Ukraine, you've been on the ground, right? So, is there a story that sticks out in your head, or just something that warmed your heart or helped you say, “I'm in the right place. This is where I'm supposed to be right now.”
TT: One of the things we do, in addition to being in Ukraine, is run an aid center in Krakow for tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, 25% of the population in Krakow, Poland, is now Ukrainian.
WSHU: Wow,
TT: And so at our center, we were having a night, we're trying to take their minds off of the world they're in now, playing chess and making pierogies. They taught us how to make pierogies, and they're varenyky, actually in Ukrainian, and the question we always get is, “Why are you here?” And so we'll say, because we want to help, and they will say, “Well, do you have family here or friends here?” and we'll say, “No, we just want to help.” And all of a sudden, you can see in their eyes, you can read it in their faces, they say to themselves, “Wow, the world hasn't forgotten.”
GT: Yeah,
TT: Because with so many things going on with Iran and Somalia and Miramar and Gaza, we're not on the - they're not on the front page of the paper anymore.
GT: And they know that they know they're below the fold, and I'm sometimes not even making below the fold,
WSHU: Right, because it's not, it's not today's hot, hot topic.
TT: It’s not the moment.
GT: Yeah,
WSHU: Yeah, I know. And you know, I'm so glad you shared that, because that is the essence of this podcast, that the people who are good at heart, quietly making the world better, doing what we can, we don't get the spotlight. And this is what this podcast, what we want to do, is to shine this spotlight. So I want to go to question three, which is just thinking in general about, you know, what is it, or who is it that inspires you? Like, is there any advice you've gotten, or a quote you live by, that helps inspire you to do this work during your retirement?
TT: I think what really inspires us is the Ukrainian people, because their resilience, their passion, their desire for normalcy in the midst of constant attack and under sirens all the time is remarkable. I mean, I think the strength of spirit that they exhibit is something incredibly unusual. You know, when you say, "Gee, what inspires us? And what do we think of in terms of advice and quotes that we've gotten?” You know, I reckon back, as Gretchen does, to the famous tennis player Billie Jean King, and she once said, "Champions adjust.” I think the Ukrainian people are champions.
GT: Yeah, they're adjusting every day.
TT: They are truly trying to go with the flow of life and try and find some sense of normalcy, and they are champions.
GT: Yeah.
WSHU: Wow, that's a, that's a great answer. I will share with you that my ancestry is Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian, depending on where the border was that year.
GT: Get out of town! Really?
WSHU: My grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side, you know, escaped the pogroms and came here on a boat, one at a time. My grandfather first, and I think of them as like Motel and Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof, because you know, he came first, they were living in a shtetl, it was called Vyshnivests. So I know that name for dumplings, because I'd heard it before. So you know, it depended on where the border was back then. But this was after World War Two, and so then my grandmother stayed behind with my uncle, and you know, got on the boat to Ellis Island with a two-year-old,
GT: That's amazing. What a legacy. That’s amazing.
TT: Have you been to Ellis Island to see?
WSHU: I have. I believe that I have one, like, third cousin that I'm actually going to meet for the first time this summer, because my grandmother was one of like seven children or more. Two sets of kids, and it's a whole story, which I'm not going to tell right now. But I'm hoping that they have stories. One of them loves to do family history. So my grandfather came to Boston, so he wasn't on Ellis Island, but my grandmother Anna did come to Ellis Island. Anyway, so the Ukrainian people are part of my blood. So I want to know about…this has to do with question four, which is, how can other people help you now? And a corollary to that is your volunteers come from Connecticut, from New York, from Long Island, like, where are they from?
TT: Our volunteers started to be, because it started in New York, in New York, we are now…
WSHU: in New York City, or in…
TT: New York City, on Long Island, and New York City.
WSHU: Okay,
TT: …and we are now quite proudly global. We have volunteers in the UK, who come, in Hawaii, who come. That's a long way to Ukraine.
from Australia, from really all points, and all points across the US. And because of some of the work we've done in Connecticut, we now have probably 15 people committed, probably four or five joining us this year in Ukraine and Poland. So we have done a lot this year, as Gretchen noted, to already get all kinds of supplies to help people survive the winter. We're now in the process of fundraising for our trip, which will run in July and August, the last week in July and August, where we will be doing what we normally do, which is buy and distribute food, basic necessities, and medical equipment, which we bring over, or we pay to have brought over, and then unpack. As well as building shelters, houses, gardens, and what have you, both in Poland for the refugees and in Ukraine. If anybody would love to help us and support us, please go to Plebeianhelpers.com and take a look. And if you're inspired or moved, please donate. That would be lovely. If you have any interest in joining us, we would love to have more people. We can do more with more money and more people. Love to have people come. Again, it is a pay-your-own-way, but the return you get emotionally is far more rewarding than the money you spend. We'll be going and working the last week in July, starting on the 20th, I think it's the seventh.
GT: The 27th.
TT: And then we finish on the seventh, but some people were staying longer and working to build more houses. And we are a group that is greatly passionate, and we try to have a little bit of fun at the same time. And I should say, for all the listeners, that we don't just go to Ukraine, to any place, at any time. Any place we go, we know that there is a bomb shelter. And we don't go anyplace where it's actively under attack. But we want to make sure that, God forbid, we don't know something's going to happen, that you can run downstairs to a bomb shelter.
GT: Last year, we were supposed to go to Lviv to help build a playground there, and unfortunately, a couple of days before we were going to leave, they had a drone attack. The bad news is there's plenty to do, and we could do a lot of work already in Krakow. But we had to cancel that particular trip.
TT: For those who may know this, you know we work with a couple of global agents there. We fund Kidsave, which is a very powerful global organization. There is an organization called UAid, which is Ukrainian Aid. So, there are times when we can't get into Ukraine. What we do is we drive to the border in vans and unload things in a warehouse that UAid manages. So we fund the warehouse, and then they bring it into the conflict area. So, we purchased an armored vehicle and retrofitted it as an ambulance to pick up injured orphans at the front lines last year. They brought it into the conflict area, and then they operated for us.
WSHU: I'm wondering, just for a minute, you know, I'm a grandmother, and I'm always trying to drop wisdom.
GT: Congratulations!
WSHU: Thank you. Three, three times in two and a half years, all from my daughter.
TT: Well done.
WSHU: Oh, she's the hero, not me. So they're second, third, and fourth grade. So this is prime grandma drops wisdom time. I always try to model for them being nice to people and helping people, and they sometimes see rewards from that, but it's more about it's just the right thing to do. So I'm wondering if in your upbringing there was a teacher or a parent who ever modeled altruism for you or said something to you like it's part of our responsibility to help the world, we call it Tikkun olam in Judaism, but it's everything is there something anyone ever said to you that put this fire in your heart that when you have the time you're going to do something like this?
GT: Well, personally, for me, my mother was a huge inspiration to be kind and to do good. She was big enough to get the protest signs out and pick the grapes. She'd be very disappointed in Cesar Chavez right now, but as a little girl, I spent a lot of time listening to my mother. And she never lectured; she just made it clear that we have an absolute responsibility to be grateful for what we have, and without getting into modeling, she would really encourage us to do that. My sister feels the same way, as do I. I spent time working in inner city Brooklyn with children, education was always my thing, and people need your help, you know. You don't think you can do it, but guess what? You know, just by being there, just your presence.
WSHU: Yep or a kind word, or a food donation, or anything.
TT: I would just say on that one, you know, in the spirit of the Jewish tradition, there's a, there's a word in Yiddish for meant to be.
WSHU: Beshert.
TT: Beshert. You're meant, you're meant to give back. and I think that is true. And you know we're only on this planet for a little while, and so you'd like to leave a legacy of having made a difference. It doesn't matter whether it was big or small; it's the fact that you leave this planet knowing you did something. And that to me is what Beshert should be really about.
WSHU: I love that, and other religions might call it a calling, or hearing God's voice, or whatever, whatever you call it, if we're good to each other, that's the result. So Tim, you may have already answered this with what you just said, but I'm going to ask it again. My final question is always, why do you think we are here on earth?
TT: I honestly believe that we're here to be a community, not to be isolated individuals. I think badly said, but picking up on John Donne, No Man Is an Island, right, and so I think that if that's true, then our role on earth is to make the human community a better place. And I could see no better way to do that than helping those in need.
WSHU: Love that, Gretchen. Anything to add or say? No,
GT: Because of my parents, I was very lucky with those guys, and they were constantly giving back to the community. We have two sons who we passed it on to them, and we feel as though this ripple effect has been pretty successful, and we want to keep it going, and so we feel very, very blessed to be able to to contribute this way, and we're going to keep it up.
TT: And I would just add on this one, just in giving back, in doing something, and making a difference. You meet the most amazing people who have the same sensibility. We have met through this organization, through our work in Ukraine and other places, the most amazingly interesting people we would never have met, and that, to me, is sort of the human fabric coming together in a way you didn't know was going to happen.
WSHU: I thank you so much for being here, for what you do, for your inspiration. If you want to help Plebeian Helpers in any way, visit plebeianhelpers.com. You can read more about what they do, volunteer your time, make a donation, or just get inspired to be good at heart yourself. Thank you for joining us.
