Saskatoon Group Rescues Girls at Risk of Being Trafficked in Ukraine

NASHI takes in vulnerable girls in Ukraine to prevent them from being trafficked. (Courtesy of NASHI)

Savelia Curniski has guided thousands of Canadian tourists through Ukraine, including many from Saskatchewan who are of Ukrainian descent.

Curniski’s grandparents came to Canada from Ukraine in 1904, and she is among the more than 12 percent of Saskatchewan residents of Ukrainian descent.

When she started giving tours in the 1990s, she had great enthusiasm for connecting with her roots, and for helping others do so as well. But in 2004, an encounter at a truck stop in Ukraine changed her life and took her tours in a very different direction.

She saw a group of about half a dozen girls, aged 12 or 13, being loaded into the back of a semi-trailer. She asked a local woman what was going on. “Very bluntly, she says, ‘Don’t you know?’” Curniski recalled.

“Ukraine is a really big center for human trafficking,” Curniski said. Especially at risk are girls in the country’s orphanages. “The predators know that they’re really very vulnerable,” Curniski told The Epoch Times, adding that they tell the girls they’re beautiful and can work as models in Turkey or Paris.

The U.S. State Department’s 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report says: “The approximately 104,000 children institutionalized in state-run orphanages [in Ukraine] are at especially high risk of trafficking. Officials of several state-run residential institutions and orphanages have allegedly been complicit or willfully negligent in the sex and labor trafficking of girls and boys under their care.”

The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that 46,000 Ukrainians were victims of human trafficking from 2019 to 2021, and more than 300,000 since 1991. About 30 percent of Ukrainians IOM surveyed in 2021 said they were ready to accept an informal and risky job offer in Ukraine, and 18 percent would accept one abroad.

Both the IOM and the State Department say many more have become vulnerable amid the current war in Ukraine, due to increased poverty and massive displacement.

Taking Care of Others

“I’m a Prairie girl and had no idea of any of this happening, just like most Canadians,” Curniski said. She felt an urgent need to do something about it. But, she thought, “What can I do about it? I’m one person from Saskatoon.”

Her faith motivated her. “Why were we put on this earth if not to take care of others?” she said. “I don’t believe in Christianity just on Sunday mornings. … You’re a Christian when you walk outside the door of the church. That, to me, is where the Christianity starts.”

She stopped guiding sightseeing tours to Ukraine and instead started organizing volunteer tours.

Curniski has slowly grown an organization called NASHI, a registered charity in Canada, operated out of her home in Saskatoon. It has a base of about 25 volunteers in Canada who have stayed with her through it all—almost 20 years now. “Just about all of the volunteers who were with me from the beginning are still with me, and that’s the measure of how dedicated they are,” she said.

NASHI’s central effort has been the creation of a safe house in Ukraine called Maple Leaf House, as homage to its Canadian roots. Maple leaf in Ukrainian is “Klenovi Lyst.”

NASHI's Maple Leaf House in Stoyanov, Ukraine. (Courtesy of NASHI)

Maple Leaf House opened in Stoyanov, western Ukraine, in 2010 and has taken in girls as young as 5. The younger they are, the more valuable they are to traffickers, Curniski said. The organization could only afford an old building, a former Soviet kindergarten, that was in bad shape. But after years of volunteer work on renovations, it was ready to bring the girls in.

NASHI has committed to raising the girls up through their college years. Curniski said it’s important to provide them with a real home—a long-term, loving home and solid education—rather than just a brief stay after which they could become vulnerable again.

‘Being Groomed’

She told the story of one girl they brought in from an orphanage when she was 9. “She was basically in the orphanage being groomed for being trafficked,” Curniski said. She had been sexually abused there.

The orphanage claimed she was happy and healthy, and at a Grade 4 level academically. Yet she could only count to 10. And she didn’t know how to handle a fork.

All they had at the orphanage were spoons, Curniski said, because they ate only soup and porridge. The girl is now 16, and although she’s well-fed and cared for by NASHI, she hides food sometimes as though there may not be more coming, Curniski said. “It takes an immense amount of time for those old, old habits.”

“These girls have been so traumatized in their young lives,” she said.

Prevention

The 17 girls currently being cared for by NASHI have not been trafficked, and most have not experienced sexual abuse as this girl did. The organization focuses on prevention, on finding the most vulnerable girls and taking them in before they can be trafficked.

“We take the poorest of the poor, or someone who is on the street,” Curniski said.

One of the oldest girls under NASHI’s care is Nastya, 17. She came to the organization about five years ago. Her mother was an alcoholic and drug addict. Nastya had hardly attended school. Within a few years at NASHI, she was admitted to college early, at the age of 15. And she was in the top 5 percent on her college entrance exam.

Nastya is studying tourism and plans to expand into psychology. She hopes to study or work in Canada one day.

NASHI puts the girls in a local school and also arranges tutors for them.

The orphanages do not send the children to local schools, Curniski said, but provide schooling internally. The education is poor and the children are thus isolated, she said.

Girls helped by NASHI pose for a photo. (Courtesy of NASHI)

NASHI takes in vulnerable girls in Ukraine to prevent them from being trafficked. (Courtesy of NASHI)

There’s a big difference between Maple Leaf House and an orphanage, the organization’s website says. “Orphanages there care for an average of 150 children per facility. They usually share a room with 20 other residents. All bathrooms are communal and meals are quite simple,” it says.

“NASHI’s Maple Leaf House is a home. Girls share a room and bathroom with one other girl, usually her sister. They attend school in the village and have school friends who are welcome to visit,” the website says. “The House is operated as much as a regular home as possible. The girls have simple chores and help each other with school work. They all consider themselves ‘Sisters.’”

War

Maple Leaf House has looked different since war broke out in Ukraine in early 2022. The girls have been evacuated to a small village in southern Poland, where the local community has stepped up to help them, Curniski said.

Some staff remain at the house, and it has become a safe stopping point for people fleeing Ukraine. People stay there for a few days at a time as they make their way to Hungary.

The girls and their local teachers in Poland have worked hard to make their education possible even though they did not speak Polish when they arrived.

The older girls who are in college—Nastya and Ivanka, 18—are attending their classes online.

Curniski reflected upon the almost-20-year journey, from having no idea where to start to being able to provide stability for these girls even amid war.

“I’m sitting at my kitchen table right now, and that’s where it all basically happened,” she said.

‘Thank You for Creating Change’

She holds an annual Perogy Paradise event in Saskatoon, which provides a portion of the funds for NASHI. Individual donors and some churches provide the rest of the funding. She doesn’t accept government funding, so as to remain independent, she said.

Students from Saskatoon's Holy Cross High School help with the 2020 Perogy Paradise NASHI fundraising event. (Courtesy of NASHI)

Volunteers in Saskatoon help with the 2020 Perogy Paradise NASHI fundraising event. (Courtesy of NASHI)

Though churches help out, she said NASHI is not connected with any particular religion or political group. “We have very left-wing-thinking people, we have very right-wing-thinking people. You have to strip yourself of that at the door and focus on the girls,” she said.

Several staff members in Ukraine are paid to take care of the girls and the house. All NASHI members in Canada are volunteers.

Curniski received a letter from a Canadian volunteer, Sydney Morin, at Christmas. Morin is a third-generation volunteer; her family’s involvement started with her grandmother. Morin was recently in Europe with her husband, both doing academic work, and they visited the girls in Poland.

Curniski read part of the letter: “We wanted to say thank you for everything you have done to change the lives of these girls. The opportunity to meet them this year has truly changed our lives.”

Morin said she was very career-oriented and didn’t plan to have children. “That has changed since meeting you and spending time with the girls,” she wrote. “Thank you for creating change in this world so immense the ripples can change the lives of those around it.”

Curniski said, “That was the best Christmas gift I could have gotten.”

She said she also used to be career-oriented—before running the tour company, she owned a restaurant and also used to work as a teacher. But, she said, helping others is more fulfilling than dedicating one’s life to a career alone.

“You just feel so much better,” she said. “We’re helping the girls but they’re helping us just as much.”