Adelaide man on a mission to help Ukrainians
People
As the people of Ukraine face a precarious phase in their fight for independence, volunteer aid worker Maurice O’Connell spoke to JENNY BRINKWORTH about the heavy toll the three-year war has taken on the country that has become his second home.
Maurice O’Connell proudly holds up his Columban calendar, a hallmark of many a Catholic family, and points to the busy schedule of speaking engagements in Adelaide and at Rotary clubs around the State.
There aren’t too many free ‘squares’. The 66 year old is on a mission to tell as many people as possible about his work as a volunteer with New Dawn, a charity run by Ukrainians out of the Black Sea port of Odesa.
There is a sense of urgency as next month he will return to Ukraine for the fourth time since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
When Maurice arrived in Odesa three years ago with a view to helping in some way, he found a group of Ukrainians providing food packs and other assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs). Many of the volunteers themselves had been forced to flee their homes.
An initial priority for the former finance and banking professional was to raise funds, using his contacts at Emmaus Catholic parish in Adelaide, to provide a stipend to volunteers so they could support themselves.
Since then, the charity has won the backing of large non-government organisations, including Caritas, and has moved from a school to a permanent base in what was the derelict nuclear safety institute. The number of food packs distributed each day has risen from 100 to 210 with an online registration process now in place.
“Before we would have more than 60 people lining up outside the hub which wasn’t ideal for safety reasons,” Maurice said.
“Just after I returned to Australia last November two missiles landed three stone throws away from our hub; there were bodies on the street by the café that I went to every day, it was so close.”
Maurice shows photos of the corpses on the pavement and a video of a “flock of drones” flying over the Black Sea as locals go about their business, such is the reality of life in Odesa. But the situation is far worse in the ‘forgotten villages’ of Kherson in southern Ukraine where homes and livelihoods have been obliterated.
Maurice at the site where he found a photo of a mother and child presumably killed in the bombing.
Something that particularly touched Maurice occurred when driving back from Kherson through the city of Mykolaiv which had been hit by Russian rockets three days earlier.
“We just stopped there, in front of a residential building, the smell of burning wood was still strong but the thing that struck me was when I looked down at my foot there was a charred photo from a family album,” he said. “Looking up at me was the photo of a young mother and a boy aged about three years.
“A metre away there were some toy cars belonging to a young boy, and you knew straight away who was inside that building.
“It was a two hour journey back to Odesa and nobody spoke a word the entire trip.”
According to United Nations statistics from the end of 2024, more than 12,340 civilians have been killed in the war, and more than double that injured. Military casualties are far greater.
Maurice said “everyone knows someone who has been killed or severely injured”.
“There has been a lot of deaths, in every village cemetery you’ll see Ukrainian flags over the graves of fallen soldiers from that village, every town has photos of the fallen as you come into the town, photos of faces lining the streets, dozens and dozens of them. The cemeteries in the city have hundreds of new graves.”
The photo he found on the ground in the ruins.
While the Ukrainian people want peace, they want it to be long-lasting.
“Everyone is fearful they will get a peace imposed on them but one which Putin will break and there will be a resumption of hostilities in a few years’ time,” he said.
“They are fighting for an independent, free Ukraine.”
While the troops were “exhausted” and “under pressure”, Maurice said Russian victory was “unacceptable” to the Ukrainians.
He pointed to a video of an interview with a farmer who was speaking in Russian and talking about how the Russian troops tortured the local civilians when they occupied their villages.
The farmer explains that he “doesn’t have a lot of his teeth” because they “fell out during the torture”.
“It’s huge luck that Ukrainian troops started to cover this village with artillery weapons, the Russian troops were scared and ran away, that’s why I am still alive,” the farmer says through an interpreter.
These are the people that Russia claims it is “liberating”.
From a humanitarian perspective, Maurice said the situation was worse in Odesa than when he first arrived.
“Then it was pretty much exclusively IDPs, now there are very few IDPs but demand for aid has increased dramatically,” he said.
“That’s because there is a much greater prevalence of real poverty in the population, especially amongst vulnerable people.
“There is very little in the way of social security, a lot of people can’t work because they are too old or have disabilities and many of those who do get paid are paid very little. High inflation means everything has gone up and people can’t cope with the increasing cost of living.”
Maurice said it wasn’t unusual to find “ordinary people in their 40s” rummaging through communal rubbish bins.
A major part of his work is visiting the ‘forgotten villages’ which are constantly being attacked by the Russians.
“There’s nothing of military significance there, but the whole street was destroyed and people living there would have been killed,” he said, reviewing a video he took last November of a small village which had just been struck by a 250 kilogram Russian glide bomb and which was next to a village he was visiting to discuss “winterization needs”.
“New Dawn has good connections with the Kherson authorities, which means we are able to go into that area; we have really good intelligence and data bases.”
The charity receives funding from large NGOs for ongoing projects such as building materials to repair houses, bore holes and reticulation projects, provision of seeds and agricultural equipment and food and hygiene aid. But Maurice said South Australians had “stepped in” with money for one-off projects, particularly Rotary clubs which had raised around $300,000.
“South Australians have been fantastic with their support” said Maurice.
Rotary in SA has funded 10 school projects to date, mainly repairing classrooms, as well as funding five high quality demountable medical centres, all in the forgotten villages.
Grassroots support is also evident in initiatives like retired schoolteacher Diane Horwath and her foundation Rebuilding Schools Ukraine which is partnering with New Dawn.
Acknowledging that he could be enjoying retirement and “living a peaceful, sedate life”, he keeps returning to Odesa because he is “totally invested in what the team is doing”.
“I can see the good that we’re achieving every single day,” he said.
“We really are making a genuine difference to people’s lives and to communities.
“It’s not just helping people directly, it’s also a catalyst for rebuilding the community. Without basic infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, there’s no reason for people to come back.”
While Maurice’s two daughters worried about him when he first went to Ukraine, he said now they just “shrug it off” and think “Dad will do what he’ll do – he’s going to go and save the world”.
He has no doubt that his latest quest is driven by his Catholic upbringing and his Jesuit education at Saint Ignatius’ College.
“That influence is at the core of who I am and the recognition of what I can and should do. Or should and can do”.
“So yes, it’s important.”
