Luda, a single mother in Khadokov, wakes at 4:40 a.m. every Tuesday to make the 5:30 a.m. train to Dnepropetrovsk so she can be first on line at the Joseph Papp Food Pantry, a four-hour roundtrip journey.

“We were living very poorly before we began getting food packages,” said Luda. “My child used to be ill. He didn’t study well. He couldn’t remember poems — he could not remember anything actually. When a child isn’t fed it’s difficult for him to remember poems.

“The food packages we get are enough for a week so we can survive. As soon as we began getting food packages we felt it became easier for us to live. Now my son feels better. Without them I do not know what our future would be.”