The first interview must be cancelled at the last minute, because another wave of Russian bombs has taken out the power and internet near Lviv, Ukraine, where Kari Anderson has been stationed for much of the last nine months. The second must be rescheduled because she has to take a meeting with members of Congress.
Suffice to say life has been a little volatile for Anderson (Russian Language and Literature, Violin Performance ’04) who spent most of 2022 drafting legislation as part of her law practice in Washington, DC, and helping Ukrainian refugees displaced by that country’s ongoing military conflict with Russia, which first began back in 2021.
When she finally connects over Zoom, it’s from her DC office. Anderson is feeling a palpable sense of wonderment at what she has experienced.
“I definitely didn't expect when I started my law career that 10 years down the road, I'd be jumping into crisis management,” Anderson says. “And refugee services as a sidekick.”
Anderson’s husband is John Lawler, the Director and Trustee founder of the Make a Difference Foundation (MADF) in the United Kingdom, an organization that typically pairs students with building projects in places like Africa, South America and East Asia. Early in 2022, the two were camped on a couch with the television on.
“We were sitting here watching the news,” recalls Anderson. “And between his experience doing development and my experience with Russian language, we thought, ‘It's crazy for us not to go over there and help.’”
The couple initially intended to spend only a couple of weeks on the Polish border as part of something called Operation SafeDrop, providing safe transportation for refugees fleeing the war using MADF’s small fleet of passenger vans. It wasn’t long before they discovered and connected with a refugee center in Lviv—and got swept up helping refugees navigate safe travel to countries in Western Europe.
Anderson was already familiar with the region. She joined the Peace Corps after graduating from UW, doing some on-the-ground international development in Turkmenistan and working with a language program in Moscow. Initially, it was her language skills that were most needed and most useful.
“I went into Russian language because I read Dostoyevsky and I played Tchaikovsky, and I loved the culture,” says Anderson. “But the UW experience was so holistic and so much more than that. It drew me to where I am now, able to care about understanding culture and communication because of what it leads to, not just what it is.”
Given the rapidly increasing number of refugees, Anderson began bringing over additional interpreters to help refugees communicate with representatives in the countries where they hoped to relocate. But instead of just translating, Anderson and her cohort found themselves helping families with everything from the basic (finding the shower and bedding) to the complex (obtaining a Visa to relocate to the United Kingdom).
“They needed to know, ‘What's going to happen to my family when I get there? Can my children go to school? Will I be able to have enough money to feed my children?’” she says. “It wasn't just signing up for a bus. It was, ‘Where should I go? Am I going to be okay there?’ Our interpreter project really turned into caseworkers for all sorts of families coming through.”
Providing person-to-person communication with the families felt like a precious human gift to Anderson, who, like many of the volunteers at the refugee center, still stays in touch with several of the families she helped.
“I did not expect that type of a deep connection with people or that long-term relationship,” she says. “We didn't even think we were going to be there working in that capacity.”
Anderson also found herself surprised by how much a small organization or an individual could accomplish in a chaotic environment. She was able to leverage her experience with on-the-ground international development to make a difference in the lives of refugees from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds.
“There were no big proposals, no big meetings in the capital city,” she laughs. “It was just, there's a problem. I'll go get a whiteboard, we're gonna solve this.”
Anderson experienced her fair share of “some kinds of help” moments in Lviv, like the well-meaning donor who offered to bring in 50 ukuleles for the bored children in the center (they were eventually donated to a school instead). Or the people who brought in balloons, not realizing that when they inevitably popped, they’d traumatize the children who had experienced gunfire and bombings. And, of course, the people who brought candy.
“I remember turning to someone and saying, ‘Okay, now we're just teaching children to take candy from strangers,’ she says. “There are a bunch of those moments where you’re like, “that's not in the textbook.’ That's just something you start to learn when you're there.”
Last November, Anderson returned to UW-Madison to talk about her experience as part of a panel on providing humanitarian aid in Ukraine. Dianna Murphy, Director of UW-Madison’s Language Institute, and Anna Tumarkin, the Russian Language Program Director in Slavic Studies, both of whom spent part of their 2022 summers aiding refugees in Lviv as well, were also part of the panel.
Anderson returned to Lviv in mid-December, and she and her husband have agreed they’ll stay in the region if their help is needed—which could be quite some time, given that Russian shelling in the western part of Ukraine continues to escalate. (“Even if the conflict ended tomorrow, we plan to be present there to help rebuild,” she says.)
No matter how long the conflict rages, Anderson knows she’s been forever changed by her time in Lviv.
“I feel like this is a competency that I've gained, jumping in with both feet and figuring it out,” she says. “And a big part of that came from focusing on language and how important it is to make those human connections.”
