Woman makes perogies in Colwood, enlists friend to randomly help seniors in Kyiv

Colwood, B.C. -

Lia is making perogies from scratch in her kitchen, recalling fond and funny memories of learning to make them with her grandmother in Ukraine.

“She’d be threatening me with a rolling pin, like I’m not doing it right,” Lia smiles, showing a picture of her doing just that, before fighting back tears.

“I’m still probably not doing it right, but I’m trying.”

Lia is trying to hold it together because she was born in Ukraine and the lives of the family and friends she grew-up visiting in Kyiv are being torn apart.

“I stress bake,” Lia says. “I just thought, ‘Maybe if I just make perogies for whoever wants it and and sell them, that will be my small way of helping.’”

So Lia and her mom Alla started making thousands of them together, before contacting her life-long friend Maksym – who still lives in Ukraine – to help.

“It’s scary because you never know where (a missile) is going to land,” Maksym says during a video call from Kyiv, after showing a picture he took of a missile flying over his head.

“Especially when you are on the street helping people.”

Thanks to Lia selling perogies from her kitchen in Canada, Max is helping seniors on the street in Ukraine.

“I find like (a) random somebody who really looks like they’re in need,” Maksym explains.

Maksym shows me photographs and video of some of the people he’s helped, including a woman he first spotted searching through a dumpster.

He offers to buy them a couple weeks’ worth of groceries. It’s usually met with suspicion until he credits Lia’s perogies.

“I say it’s help from Canada,” Maksym says. “A friend from Canada.”

A friend who’s bought groceries for those too scared or frail to leave their homes, too poor to buy what little affordable food is left, too distraught over the death of their family members to cope.

“In the end, they’re still not able to believe random people are helping them,” Maksym says.

They’re often too overwhelmed to express their thanks with words.

“It’s (a) smiling, grateful face,” Maksym says. “Sometimes it’s tears.”

Lia is also grateful for all the people who’ve bought perogies through her Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/lia.bogachek), who’ve helped raise more than $7,000, which is also being donated to a non-profit in Ukraine.

“It’s beyond what I ever would have though of,” Lia says.

But as long as Max is willing to risk his life to help others, Lia and her mom Alla say they will keep making perogies, until the conflict is over.

“With each perogy, you send love,” Alla smiles. “You send hope. You send comfort.”

Which means that, according to Lia’s grandma, they’re being made “just right.”