One sponsor’s generosity kicks off a chain reaction of welcome
“Mom, please tell me it’s fireworks,” Olena Hedzhymanova recalled her oldest daughter Anhelina saying after waking her up the day that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Terrified, Olena’s family was forced to flee their home country as the war began—but on the other side of the world, they found safety and community in a small town in Iowa.
It takes a village to do the kind of lifechanging work that sponsors do—the Iowa Newcomer Integration Community and Exchange (IA NICE) has taken that to heart. The 100% volunteer-run community organization was born from a shared commitment among neighbors to welcome and support Ukrainian families seeking safety in the United States.
IA NICE coordinates community resources, donations, and partnerships to ensure newcomers receive the support they need for community integration. They provide fully furnished homes and loaned vehicles to newly arrived Ukrainian families and work individually with each family to help them complete legal documentation and applications for benefits. All with the guarantee of financial independence within 120 days.
And it all started with one person’s willingness to welcome newcomers into their home.
Olena and her family lived a happy life in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine in the northeast of the country, close to the Russian border. She remembers her city fondly, recalling the blooming flowers in Kharkiv every spring and summer.
Maksym, Olena’s husband, who worked for a legal academy and as a taxi driver, had just completed a fare at the Russian border when the invasion began. He saw explosions above him as he fled home to Kharkiv.
“It was very chaotic,” Olena said. “Nobody knew what was going on [or] what to do.”
The family packed what they could, not sure how long they would be away, and took shelter with friends nearby who had a home with a basement.
“The basement was cold and damp, and there wasn’t enough space for everyone,” Olena shared. “There were 21 people there, so there was no room… the adults were sleeping in the chairs.”
While Kharkiv’s historic center was relentlessly bombed, the family did what they could to survive. They would run out of the basement to cook food and make bread for all 21 people.
After one week, the family decided they had to leave. Olena, Maksym, and their two daughters, along with Olena’s mother Valentyna and her brother and sister-in-law, all made their way out of Kharkiv and into Drahobych in western Ukraine where friends had found them a house. They lived there for a short time before they moved again, this time to Mukachevo, a city even further west, near the Slovakian and Hungarian borders.
The Hedzhymanovi's lived in Mukachevo for seven months, wondering what they would do next. Olena worried about daughters who were unable to go to school.
Finally, a friend from Kharkiv reached out and shared information about a pathway to leave Ukraine for the United States. Olena registered on Welcome Connect, the Welcome.US platform that connects Ukrainians with sponsors in the U.S.
For several months, Olena communicated with potential sponsors to no avail. In the early fall of 2022, Olena connected with Angela Boelens, a college professor at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. After a Zoom call where Olena introduced Angela to her younger daughter, Sofiia, and her mother, Angela agreed to sponsor the family.
Angela and Olena share a hug and a bond. As the first family welcomed, Olena and her family are now very involved as volunteers who support new Ukrainians coming to Iowa.
In October 2022, Olena, Maksym, Sofiia, and Valentyna left Ukraine for the U.S. They were the first family to be welcomed by Angela and the community of DeWitt, Iowa, through what would eventually become the IA (Iowa) NICE organization—a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization formed by Angela to organize her local community to welcome more Ukrainians. Olena’s oldest daughter, Anhelina, had initially decided to stay in Ukraine, but she joined her family in 2024, sponsored by another member of the IA NICE organization.
Angela took the family shopping for food and clothing and supported them as they settled into their new community. This gesture meant the world to the Hedzhymanovi's who had just $500 to their names when they first arrived.
Olena and Maksym both found jobs at a construction company where they worked for nearly a year before Maksym opened up his own construction business with some friends.
In just one short year after their arrival in the U.S., the family bought a home of their own.
“It’s a big dream for my family,” Olena said.
Like any other American
Angela Boelens’s journey into sponsorship began when a colleague mentioned the possibility of connecting with Ukrainian families through the Welcome Connect platform. Angela was deeply moved by the outbreak of war in Ukraine and the resulting humanitarian crisis and felt compelled to help in a meaningful way.
Back when the war started, I was like every other American, just horrified at what I was seeing on the news, imagining if that was myself and my own children. So I think I was not unlike most Americans and just wanted to do what I could to help.
After conducting thorough research on the platform and ensuring she fully understood the responsibilities and expectations, Angela began messaging other beneficiaries on Welcome Connect.
“I realized how impactful what I was doing could be in their lives,” Angela said. “They were in really bad situations.”
In the fall of 2022, Angela sponsored four Ukrainian families, including Olena’s. As she prepared to welcome the families, her involvement deepened. Angela's efforts expanded beyond individual sponsorship.
Within one month after the first arrivals, with the incredible support of her community in DeWitt, Iowa, Angela launched the charitable 501(c)(3) organization—IA NICE (Iowa Newcomer Integration Community & Exchange)—to welcome and support Ukrainian families seeking humanitarian parole through Uniting for Ukraine, the humanitarian parole sponsorship program that provides a pathway to safety for Ukrainians fleeing the war.
The organization is entirely volunteer driven, relying on community donations and support to sustain its operations.
“What's kind of unique about our group is that we're not just like a sponsor circle,” Angela said. “We have kind of created our own model, which involves a three phase program where we help people before, when they first get here, and then after they become financially independent. The way that we've structured it here, they're independent within 90 days.”
The organization offers newcomers a place to live when they first arrive and owns two transitional homes in DeWitt.
The inception of this program came unexpectedly when Greg Gannon, President and CEO of the DeWitt Bank and Trust, approached Angela with an incredible donation.
An investment in humanity
Shortly after the war in Ukraine broke out, Greg and his wife were watching the news and felt compelled to help in some way. After they learned about a Ukrainian family who had been sponsored to come to DeWitt, Greg’s wife reached out to the family to inquire about how they were able to come to Iowa.
That is when they first heard about Uniting for Ukraine.
In the following weeks, Greg met with Angela. She asked if he could let her know of any houses for sale through his role at the bank.
As a sponsor welcoming Ukrainians into the community, Angela was in need of housing, and she felt that Greg and his bank might be able to help.
The help that Greg was able to provide was beyond anything Angela could have imagined.
Greg contacted several local businesspeople and philanthropists to help find housing.
After countless phone calls, Greg brought together a network of 21 investors who each contributed $20,000 of their own money, totalling $420,000, to purchase two homes in DeWitt that could be used as temporary housing for Ukrainian newcomers.
The investor group agreed that there was no need for a guarantee of a return of their money. They all accepted the risk of loss to help the cause and to provide immediate shelter for Ukrainians coming to DeWitt.
Two other homes have been donated for transitional housing by the local hospital system and another businessman in town lent the organization his house. With the addition of Angela’s two personal properties, there are now seven transitional homes available for newcomers arriving in Dewitt.
“It was really cool because I didn’t go out and say, ‘Hey, can y’all raise some money for me?’” Angela said. “I just asked if anybody knew of an empty farmhouse, and I ended up with the whole community rallying around us and giving us the support that we needed to help these families.”
As he reflected on his experience as a key contributor of IA NICE, Greg shared, “It’s been a good feeling. This is so much more fulfilling, so much more rewarding than just writing a check.”
Greg is hopeful that the organization and the sponsorship efforts coming out of DeWitt will inspire other communities throughout the state and beyond to get involved in welcoming work.
The efforts and impact of IA NICE are possible because of local residents who have been generous with their time, expertise, and skills. In addition to Angela and Greg, retired nurse Karen McWilliams is a beloved Welcomer who supports newcomers with everything from setting up their apartments before they arrive, to assisting them with medical appointments, to escorting their children to their first days of school. Ann Eisenman, who has played an essential role in the organization’s efforts, is the foundation director of the Paul Sharar Foundation at the Clinton Community College in the neighboring town of Clinton, Iowa. She connects newcomers to programs at the college that include English language and GED acquisition classes for those who don’t have high school diplomas. The college also provides training programs and assistance for newcomers as they prepare for a commercial driver’s license exam. As a fifth-generation Iowan, 77-year-old Roger Hill—who also worked at DeWitt Bank and Trust—played an early role in expanding the nonprofit’s network and financial donations. It was Roger who introduced Ann to Angela, and through his involvement in a number of community organizations, including the local Lions Club, Roger has made contributions in both expanding the network of Iowa Nice and in financial donations for the organization.
Karen McWilliams first got involved with IA NICE after Angela presented to her church group at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. “I’ve been fully involved wherever needed,” Karen said. “As long as I can physically or logistically be there, I’m helping when I can.”
Since the arrival of Olena and her family in 2022, IA NICE has welcomed 65 Ukrainian individuals into the small Iowan community. As the group has added more volunteers, Angela’s efforts have shifted from being an individual sponsor to leading regional efforts to welcome more newcomers in communities all across the state.
“My personal efforts have begun to shift more toward showing other communities how to do what we’re doing,” Angela shared. “We’re not talking people into being sponsors. We’re training communities to know how to get the community to rally around immigrants with a team of volunteers dedicated to each person helping a number of beneficiaries in the same area.”
IA NICE has expanded their welcoming efforts and started an organization, called Nice Work, that helps newcomers find employment. They connect their community with refugee services so they can get immediate employment for more than minimum wage.
“Minimum wage doesn’t cut it,” Angela said. “They need more than that in order to start rebuilding wealth.”
Nice Work involves local businesses in the work of welcoming, creating a talent pipeline, and connecting newcomers with viable job opportunities in their communities.
“The first family that I helped, it took me four months to get through everything that needed to be done from getting them housing, all the legal stuff, jobs,” Angela shared. “We now have it down to like two weeks because we do it over and over. We have subject matter experts. So even if I have a sponsor who comes to me, I don’t ask [them] to do everything. My organization processes the papers. They do all of that sort of case management. And we've got a very detailed project plan that I use.”
Volunteers are able to focus on individual areas of support, such as housing or education.
The model that IA NICE uses has been refined and is operating with noteworthy efficiencies. And other communities in Iowa are taking note. Officials in Green County, about four hours west of DeWitt, are now engaging in their own sponsorship efforts and modeling their efforts after the IA NICE’s successful model.
The chain reaction of welcoming
For Olena Hedzhymanova and her family, Dewitt is now home. They hope to find a legal pathway to citizenship in the United States once their two years of humanitarian parole is up.
As the first family welcomed by Angela and the DeWitt community, Olena and her family are now very involved as volunteers and Welcomers who support new Ukrainians who come to Iowa.
“So many people helped us, and we want to pay it back,” Olena said, adding how honored she is to now support others who are in the same position she and her family were in just two years ago.
Olena shared that sponsors give a gift to newcomers that they may not even fully grasp.
“The most important is that hope for a normal life and for safety [the] sponsor gives,” she said. “Some might not understand the capacity of it and how much it means to families, but it’s giving [them] a whole new life, a new perspective to families who were just stuck in the present, who couldn’t plan for the future.”
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