Ukrainian business owner on the Western Slope donates profits to homeland defense
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — On a bleak Thursday morning, Kate Bennett woke up to a flurry of notifications on her phone. Texts, direct messages and an overwhelming number of questions asking about her and her family’s safety. After some brief investigation, Bennett would discover the unthinkable: Russia had just invaded her home country of Ukraine.
“I was literally heartbroken to see my country being just, destroyed,” explained Bennett, who lives in Grand Junction, nearly 6,000 miles from Ukraine's capital of Kyiv. “I felt helpless. I felt like I'm so far away, what could I do from far away?”
Bennett moved to the United States five years ago from Ukraine and has spent the last three years on the Western Slope. Just last year, she opened New Way Refillery — a household refillery and recycling business that she would later use as an outlet for international support.
Starting out with just a van, Bennett drove up and down the valley visiting people who shared her vision of sustainability. After a summer’s worth of refilling soap bottles from her mobile business, she decided she needed a store that people could visit themselves. On Nov. 1 of last year, she opened the doors to her new shop.
“It was great starting with the van but there were some issues,” said Bennett. “People couldn’t try the product or didn’t want to schedule a whole house call to refill just a little bit. So we saw a need in a location where people can come and check it out because the concept is so new.”
Located near the doorstep of the Colorado Mesa University campus, Bennet’s new store hosts a variety of household soaps and detergents that people can use to refill containers brought from home. Her products are sourced in North America from companies she has found to be eco-conscious and made from natural ingredients.
Though her old van is no longer seen driving around town, Bennett said her clientele has remained. And when tragedy struck, she was greeted with outstanding love and support from the locals she had met.
“I remember people asking me about it as it was escalating already for the past month. Was my family safe?” Bennett said. “I never thought that something like this could happen in our modern day.”
With her own family still living in Kyiv, Bennett felt obligated to help in any way she could. However, she knew her distance away from home would be a challenge.
“I can't go volunteer, I can't do much. So what is there that I can do?” Bennett asked herself, “What would be helpful?” After searching online for a reliable and trustworthy outlet for Ukrainian aid, she decided to give Come Back Alive her backing. And for the remining days of the month of February, she would donate all of her profits along with donations, to the defense initiative.
Come Back Alive is a non-government organization formed in 2014 with the purpose of providing the Ukrainian military with purely defensive aid, meaning no weapons or bullets. It provides gear like body armor, thermal imagers and tablets.
“People showed so much support and love,” said Bennett. “There were some people that I had never seen before and I don’t know if I will see again but would just drop money in the donation jar and leave without anything to say.”
In total, Bennett secured over $2,000 in donations and continues accepting funds through her countertop jar that’s appropriately dressed with small American and Ukrainian flags. The donations will continue to go to Come Back Alive; however, Bennett has said that she is continuing to look for ways that she can support Ukrainians directly using her ties to the country.
For her, the whole experience from the last few weeks has left Bennett with a sense of community that she didn’t have before. Even though she moved away from her home country five years ago, she has found a new sense of home.
“It was beautiful how the community gathered to support me, and the acceptance that they showed me,“ said Bennett. “They made me feel like I belong here you know, that they accepted me here, that this was my community too.”
Matt Thornton is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. He is based in Grand Junction. You can contact him at matthewthornton@rmpbs.org.