Daria Cherednyk
Daria Cherednyk, 19, remembers getting off the plane in the United States and seeing her grandfather, who was so happy to see her.
She hadn’t visited her grandparents, who live in the Harrisburg area, in six years—the last time she visited the states with her family. However, this time was under very different circumstances. This time, she was alone, and she cried as she pulled her heavy suitcase over to meet him.
“He was happy, and I didn’t understand why he was so happy,” Cherednyk said. “For me, it was a disaster.”
It was August 2022 when Cherednyk came from her home in Ukraine to live with her grandparents. The previous February, Russia had invaded Ukraine, sparking war between the countries and causing tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties over the following months.
When the invasion began, Cherednyk packed a change of clothes and an extra pair of shoes, thinking she’d hide out in a friend’s basement temporarily and then resume life as normal. She remembers being concerned that she didn’t pack her purple shampoo to maintain her blonde hair.
However, in the weeks that followed, her family would flee to Poland for safety for five months before deciding it was best that she take her grandparents up on their offer and go to live with them in the U.S.
She knew she had to go, but she was terrified to leave.
“I arrived alone, without anyone,” she said. “Only me and this big world.”
Cherednyk was one of over 271,000 Ukrainians who arrived in the U.S. during the year following the Russian invasion, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She and many others came through the “Uniting for Ukraine” program, which has allowed Americans to sponsor Ukrainian refugees, provided that they’re financially supported. Hundreds of Ukrainians, like Cherednyk, made their way to central Pa.
Cherednyk was only 18 when she left her family, friends and her life, as she knew it, behind. She was a first-year college student, had good friends and had a “simple dream” to live and work in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
It’s been a little over a year since Cherednyk’s life was turned upside down. She recounted all of this, sharing her story from her desk in the basement of Harrisburg’s Market Square Presbyterian Church—the International Service Center’s (ISC) humble headquarters.
Cherednyk now works as an intake specialist for the organization, which assists refugees and asylum seekers in the Harrisburg area.
A small sign for the ISC hangs inconspicuously off the back of the church in an alleyway. If you don’t know where the center is, you’ll miss it, but those who need the help the group provides always seem to find it.
Someone Who Understands
Since 1976, the organization has been assisting migrants and refugees. Executive Director Dr. Truong Phuong, who was a refugee from Vietnam in 1967, started a radio program, “The Spirit of Vietnam,” to help disseminate information to Vietnamese immigrants.
A few years later, Phuong grew the program to provide assistance to Vietnamese refugees who came through Fort Indiantown Gap at the end of the Vietnam War, calling it the Indochinese Service Center, which would later become the ISC. In the 1980s and ‘90s, the ISC helped resettle around 300 refugees who were former prisoners of war in Vietnam.
“When I came here, we had to rely on hard work and our own wits to survive,” Phuong said. “I had my fair share of language barriers to overcome, economic hardships […] and sometimes you face discrimination. I’m in the best place to understand the pain of the refugees and to help them solve their problems, because I went through that.”
Like Phuong, all of the center’s staff are former refugees.
Throughout the years, the center adjusted its services to fit with the need, helping refugees from Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, Congo, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Iraq and many other countries. From 2021 through 2022, the center assisted 125 Afghan refugees, following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
When conflict escalated in Ukraine, the ISC again met the need and, as of early November, has helped 396 Ukrainian refugees.
Cherednyk was one of them. She first visited the center in search of food. The ISC provides regular meals and basic necessities to refugees, but also to community members experiencing homelessness and others in need.
Additionally, the ISC assists with securing housing, jobs, social services and learning English, among other post-resettlement services.
For Phuong, his mission is to help people start their lives in the U.S. “with dignity.” His goal is to get them on the right track until they become self-sufficient and no longer need the center’s services.
While receiving help, Cherednyk was offered a job at the center to help others, like her, in need of support.
“People just need to speak with someone who understands them,” she said. “And they also understand me.”
Kateryna Gmyria
Welcome Home
Kateryna Gmyria, a Ukraine native, has lived in the states for 15 years. She started working at the center after the war started, looking for a way to help. With many of her own family members still living in Ukraine, Gmyria takes the story of each person whom she helps to heart.
“Every person who comes here, I can feel their pain,” she said. “I don’t have 9-to-5 hours. It’s a 24-hour job. I go out of my way to help.”
Gmyria got connected with Olena Agannesian and her son, Arsen Ahannesian, 31, who lived in Shrewsbury, Pa., for a year after fleeing Ukraine and coming to the states through the “Uniting for Ukraine” program in June 2022. The mother and son needed help, Gmyria was told. The family that sponsored them wasn’t able to fully support them anymore, and they felt alone and isolated.
Gmyria drove to pick them up and bring them to Harrisburg, as she worked to find them an apartment in the city.
Lori Fortini, vice president and director of operations for Harrisburg-based developer, WCI Partners, had recently started volunteering at the ISC, along with friends Laura Butcher and Robin Jones. It didn’t take long for her housing connections to come in handy at the center.
A few days after they moved, Olena and Arsen had a furnished apartment ready for them.
Olena Agannesian
Just a year before, Olena had witnessed the horrors of war in her hometown of Kharkiv as bombs flew overhead, forcing her to flee her home. Now, she was walking into her own apartment, with flowers and a card that read, “Welcome home.”
“I cried,” she said, with Gmyria translating. “I didn’t expect someone to reach out and help me out after a year of being here.”
It’s moments like these that let Fortini and Butcher, who serves as a mentor to Cherednyk, know how much volunteering with ISC is making a difference.
“A lot of it is just listening to them and connecting them with resources,” Butcher said. “For us, it can take minutes to say that thing or make that phone call or give that suggestion. But for them, it can change the trajectory of their life.”
Fortini and Butcher have also come to realize just how great the need is in their immediate community.
“Many of them are my neighbors, and I didn’t even know it,” Fortini said.
The volunteers have also started teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for those who need to learn. They stressed that anyone can volunteer and that the help is definitely needed right now.
“If you don’t like what you’re seeing in the news and how you’re feeling about everything, this is something you can do about it,” Butcher said.
Arsen Ahannesian
Moving Forward
For Cherednyk, life is busy since moving to the U.S. Her grandparents have pushed her to keep busy with an ESL course, learning to drive and continuing to pursue her bachelor’s degree online through the university she attended in Ukraine. She has also started studying at HACC to get a degree in web design and development and began taking free courses offered by Harrisburg-based digital marketing agency WebFX.
It’s been a lot, but she’s thankful her grandparents have encouraged her to keep busy. It’s kept her focus off of devastating news from home and feelings of homesickness.
“It took one year to realize that I couldn’t change anything and I needed to move on,” she said. “But it’s hard.”
It’s been over a year since Cherednyk has seen her family, and she misses them immensely. She doesn’t know when she will see them next, but she’s grateful for the friends she’s made here and all that she’s accomplished so far.
“This country helped me grow up,” she said. “After one year, I have friends here, work, my own apartment, my car. I feel really proud of myself.”
Olena and Arsen are feeling much happier since moving to Harrisburg, but have struggled to find work in their professions, a challenge that many other Ukrainian refugees have faced, as well.
Olena was a hairstylist in Ukraine for years, but she has yet to learn to speak English, which has made finding a job in a salon challenging. Arsen was an architect and interior designer with years of experience, but with limited English and without an idea of how long they’ll be able to stay in the U.S., he hasn’t been able to find work in his career field either.
“When I came here, I thought it would be easy. I would apply and have more opportunities, but no,” he said. “I’m trying, but it’s hard.”
The “Uniting for Ukraine” program allows people to come to the states for a two-year “parole” period. So far, the federal government hasn’t said what will happen to refugees when that time is up. Whether there will be a path for them to stay or if they’ll have to leave remains unknown.
Olena and Arsen are about a year and a half into their time here. With possibly only several months left, employers have been resistant to hire them. Cherednyk has less than a year left, as well. For now, they’re all left in limbo, wondering whether to keep putting down roots or to prepare to leave.
In the meantime, Arsen has started working at the ISC, trying to aid others like him. It has helped him feel less alone.
“When you speak with the community, you feel like you’re not alone because they have the same situation,” he said.
On a Friday at the ISC, the basement is bustling. Staff and volunteers form an assembly line as they unload food donations out of a truck, down the stairs and into the center. Many staff and volunteers have their own challenges to figure out, but everyone works together to help their neighbor.
Phuong tries to remind everyone who comes through those basement doors that, despite their situation, they have worth and they belong here. Starting from ground zero and making a life in a new country takes a lot of work, but he’s the perfect example of what can happen.
“No matter where you’re coming from, from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Africa, you have something to contribute to this country,” Phuong said. “Whatever you want to be, you can become.”
To contact the International Service Center, call 717-236-9401 or email Dr. Truong Phuong at [email protected].
Photos by Pavel Serdyuk, a Ukrainian photographer who recently relocated to the Harrisburg area. Find more of his work on Facebook and Instagram at @foto_serdyuk or @PaulSer.photo.
