Highlights
- Growing up, Olga Mahler attended a boarding school for blind children in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which came under shelling last week according to Ukrainian media.
- Mrs Mahler and her family have travelled to Poland to help blind refugees from Ukraine adapt to life.
- Mrs Mahler and her husband sold their gold holdings to fund the trip and have set up a GoFundMe campaign.
Through her YouTube channel “Born Blind to Inspire” and recurring workshops, Mrs Mahler tries to help visually impaired Australians learn to cook, use gadgets and generally live life to the fullest.
Now the Brisbane woman, who was born with a condition called congenital retinal degeneration and optic nerve atrophy, is hoping her skills can be of use to the many Ukrainian civilians seeking safety in neighbouring countries.
Last week Mrs Mahler learned that the boarding school for blind children in Kharkiv where she’d spent 12 years as a kid had come under shelling and the students evacuated to Poland.
Kharkiv is the second-largest city in Ukraine.
“Every place I loved in Kharkiv has been destroyed,” Mrs Mahler told SBS Russian.
She decided to offer her help to visually impaired people who now have to adapt to life in a new country.
“When this all started I was crying all the time and refreshing the news feed with my Ukrainian friends' posts. It was the 28th of February when I woke up and thought that I must do something,” she said.
By that time her sister and nephew had already left Ukraine, but her parents and ex-husband were still in Kharkiv.
Mrs Mahler was born in Russia and speaks Russian like the majority of the population in Kharkiv. She moved to Australia around nine years ago with her elder son after marrying an Australian.
Despite being a translator and knowing several languages, she said she doesn’t speak Ukrainian strongly.
Still, she said she wouldn't have any hesitation in going to Ukraine if she wasn’t visually impaired and didn’t have kids.
“And I think, my husband who is Australian would go with me straight to Ukraine if we didn’t have children.”
The couple has two sons, a five-year-old who has travelled with them, and a 16-year-old who stayed in Australia.
Mrs Mahler explained that she got in touch with a Polish charity organisation that works with blind people and has been fielding requests for help from blind people and their families who are still in Ukraine.
Olga Mahler and her family Source: Supplied by Olga Mahler
We ask them, please try to get to the border, we’ll meet you there, we’ll give you accommodation and food, we’ll do all we can.
For visually impaired people, she said it’s extremely hard to get to a shelter during bombing or shelling.
“You’re likely to be injured on your way to a shelter,” Mrs Mahler said, adding that this is a problem for many people with disabilities.
Mrs Mahler and her husband intend to cover most of the expenses themselves.
"As my husband explained to me, we had gold that we had saved for the future. We are selling it to help people."
They have also started a campaign called “Help Us Shelter Ukraine” on GoFundMe.
She said the crowdfunding platform was initially reluctant to host her fundraiser due to fears that scammers would try to cash in on the war in Ukraine, but later they agreed.
Mrs Mahler and her family arrived "safely" in Poland on Monday.
“From the airport, we immediately went to the station to meet the mother of a friend who got out of Kharkiv," she said.
The people in Poland are unusually kind. The hotel allowed us to have this woman with us in our room with no additional charge and didn't say a word about her two cats.
"Two nights before our arrival we booked a room for a blind mother with two children. They are here.
"My ex-husband, his wife and mother are on their way to meet us. It was very hard for them to get out of Kharkiv after the terrible bombing. The train ride was hell too.
"Both my ex-husband and his wife see poorly. We will try to invite them to Australia since he is the father of my eldest son."
