The Rogers City man started One Box for Ukraine, now a nonprofit called One Box, after the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

“Now it’s called just One Box because it’s actually been incorporated and is a 501(c)3 nonprofit now,” Byelich said. “Because of that, it made more sense to me to keep it at just One Box, because that way, the door is always open to help out in other places, under that big umbrella.”

He recently returned from his 13th trip to the war-torn country of Ukraine, where he has made many connections with local people and organizations who share the mission of helping to alleviate some of the tremendous hardship many are undergoing.

One Box “provides humanitarian aid to people displaced by war, and other disasters, one box at a time,” a description on the website, one-box.org, states. “It connects donors with those in need.”

Courtesy Photo A group of about 30 mothers and children await the distribution of nonperishable food items and hygiene products that Byelich and his One Box team brought with them to this area of Ukraine along the Dnieper River, across the water from Russian lines.

“I’ve actually sent a little bit of stuff to Greece, as well, for some refugee situations there,” Byelich added. “But still, 95% of it goes to Ukraine.”

He first visited in mid-April of 2022, using Poland as a base and heading to Ukraine from there.

“From there, as kind of a base, I make repeat trips into Ukraine each time,” Byelich said last week. “I just got back a few days ago after spending a month, basically the whole time, in Ukraine.”

In the time he has spent there, Byelich has built connections and expanded his network of volunteers throughout Poland and Ukraine.

“It got started, because, at the beginning of the war, I was watching on television,” Byelich recalled. “You could see everything happening there, and it was just like, ‘In today’s world, how could something like this happen?'”

Courtesy Photo The landscape of Ivano Frankivsk in southwestern Ukraine.

He said plenty of organizations were asking for money to help with relief efforts, but he wanted to be sure his work was actually helping those in need and getting to displaced Ukrainians who needed it most.

“I wanted to go in person and meet people, and try to vet them myself,” Byelich said. “That worked in Poland. So, initially, I came back and started to go to churches and other groups of people, because I had heard a lot of other people say, ‘Yeah, I want to help, but I’m just not comfortable with some of these bigger organizations.’ I discovered that here in Northeast Michigan, there were a lot of people who really wanted to help.”

He said he approached people telling them of the opportunity, and that he will be the one making sure the boxes upon boxes of donated clothing, shoes, hygiene items, toys, and nonperishable food gets into the right hands.

“It just took off from there,” Byelich said. “People started donating boxes of clothing, and then they would give me $20, or $50 to pay for the shipping, and we could have it there in two weeks, to Poland.”

The initiative continues to grow, as the war rages on. Byelich enters dangerous areas wearing body armor and praying that none of the bombs come down as he distributes what he can to some of the estimated six million displaced citizens within Ukraine.

Courtesy Photo Boyd Byelich, center, poses for a photo with the U.S./Ukraine flag he presented to a group at a STEM school he regularly partners with in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, a big distribution point for his One Box efforts.

“From there, it continued to evolve, and with each trip, I made more and more contacts, and the network built, and I was also able to have my own confidence in some of these other places to then start sending things directly into Ukraine,” Byelich said.

He works with a Ukrainian shipping company down in Detroit.

“I still take loads down every two to three weeks,” Byelich said. “What’s nice now is I can send things directly to contacts I have in Ukraine, and … it’s almost like filling orders now.

Going in person is still the best way to show the people that you care, Byelich said.

“The message it sends when you go in person to some of these places, some of these villages, they cannot believe somebody would actually come to them, let alone come so far as America,” he said. “The message of support and care that it sends, you can’t really communicate it, except when you show up.”

Courtesy Photo Boyd Byelich, right, delivers a shoebox of toys and a box of food to a child in Stanislaw, a village on the Black Sea, south of Kherson.

Tears of appreciation are often shared with Byelich and his crew when they bring food, clothing, school supplies, medical supplies, and more to those in need.

“Half the people start crying,” he said. “They’re so overwhelmed. Most of the time, they didn’t even really have advance notice that we were coming.”

Often, recipients are mothers with children, the elderly, and the disabled. Byelich and his team seek out those with the most pressing needs, and meet them.

“One of the things I’ve done the last two Christmases is get connected with children who are displaced inside Ukraine, or in orphanages or in hospitals,” he said. “This past Christmas, I went to a military facility there that was for families who either the husband/father has been killed in action, missing in action, or is a prisoner of war.”

They provided those children with backpacks of toys that many groups from Northeast Michigan put together.

“We handed out 87 backpacks of toys to kids there that particular day, and that’s just one example,” he said.

One Box connects people in the U.S. to those in Eastern Europe in a way they may have never thought possible, thanks to one caring man who knows it’s his purpose in life to help the downtrodden.

“It’s almost like giving people here a direct connection with people in need over there,” Byelich said. “It helps them feel like they’re making more of an impact … Each time I go there it just reinforces how great the needs are and how relatively easy it is for us to help, even from thousands of miles away.”

Living in a war zone is a frightening and painful experience, and Byelich wants to bring some kind of hope and light into the lives of those who are hurting.

“That’s why I keep going back,” Byelich said. “To me, it’s priceless.”