Local residents who want to help Ukrainians can do so by donating military boots, a Fort Bragg military spouse said.

Elizabeth Hammond is helping coordinate efforts with world ministries to collect the boots to send to Ukrainians in need to help navigate cities destroyed by Russian airstrikes.

When Hammond’s husband deployed to Ukraine in 2020, he met Calvary Chapel pastor George Markey through mutual friends in Kyiv, Hammond said Monday.

Markey is an American citizen who moved to Ukraine in 1991 after the border that divided Europe between World War II and the Cold War fell, she said. He still lives there today.

“He had to evacuate once Kyiv started being shelled,” Hammond said.

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Hammond said one of the pastor’s friends, Ukrainian Minister Vitaliy Smolin, coordinates humanitarian aid and relief to Ukrainians.

“When a church says these are the ways to help, I take that very seriously because they are the ones seeing the needs and talking to the people who live there,” Hammond said. “With us being a military community and having an abundance of shoes, it seems obvious and I felt a lot of energy to say yes, we want to do everything we can.”

Hammond said the local community’s donation of the boots is a way to “really do something about what’s happening in Ukraine.”

After years of tension between Russia and Ukraine, Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24.

“When you see the pictures, you start to realize that every person walking around (in Ukraine) needs boots. There’s glass. There’s shards,” Hammond said. “It’s not easy to walk through the rubble to help people get to safety, and I think that’s one way for us to help.”

Hammond said a North Carolina who sits on the board of a ministry that helps Ukraine is working with the Ukrainian minister to handle shipping and distribution of the boots through his contacts at the Ukrainian ministry. of Defense and in Poland.

Boots can be dropped off at the following locations:

• Bragg ‘N Barn Thrift Shop, 2412 Woodruff St., Fort Bragg, until March 22
• Cumberland Coffee Roasters, 3109 N. Main St., Hope Mills, through March 23
• Highland Animal Hospital, 981 S. McPherson Church Road, Fayetteville, until March 18
• Triangle Rock Club, 5213 Raeford Road, Fayetteville, until March 22
• Orange Theory Fitness, 1800 Skibo Road, Fayetteville, through March 23
• CrossFit Haymount, 3623 Sycamore Dairy Road, Fayetteville, until March 23

Writer Rachael Riley can be reached at [email protected] or 910-486-3528.