After the breach of the dam at Cherson, she was busy coordinating and setting up emergency relief efforts. Within 24 hours, most of the international volunteers in Ukraine were already in Cherson with full cars loaded with relief supplies. We had set up an emergency line for people and animals that needed to be taken off the roofs of their houses and there was an emergency hospital and shelters set up. She could also tell people in Holland what was needed at the time and where they could deliver these items. Mapping the hard-to-reach areas where urgent help such as water, food and clothing was needed. Generally, Ukrainian people do not want to be evacuated from their homes and land (dacha) that has often been in the family for generations.

Debbie says, "I am proud to be part of a team of thousands of international volunteers who are now very well coordinated thanks in part to the 50 or so group apps we are in. This enables us to anticipate immediately when something is needed or there is a change in the situation somewhere like after the dam broke. The big 'giro 555' organizations also depend on our network and now accumulated expertise."

Debbie gives new volunteers information on the simplest things such as money matters, phone cards, how to fill out customs papers for your relief goods to the protocols in case you get near the front or she works with these volunteers to find a suitable workplace for them in Ukraine.
 

Through "the Buurtzorg," a Dutch nationwide home care organization, she receives many relief supplies. She has set up a group app with people and organizations throughout the Netherlands who receive these items and bring them to Ukraine. Every month she sends the Buurtzorg a new call with the list of people she has in her Buurtzorg group app. This list needs to be kept up to date because sometimes people quit or new people join.

Debbie started a book project, She bought books in Ukraine for Ukrainian children in the Netherlands so they can continue to read in their own language. This project had become too big so she had to hand it over to other volunteers. Eventually they managed to get Rabobank to donate 6,000 books. It's a lot, but as with other things it unfortunately remains a drop in the bucket.

As Debbie puts it herself:

"You also push your boundaries, I can clearly remember the first time I walked on foot with a shopping cart into Ukraine with relief goods. (We crossed the border several times a day with a few hundred shopping carts to get the relief goods across the border faster) Or the first time I heard the air alarm go off in Lviv. But just as the Ukrainian people had to get used to it, so did volunteers like me"

I found out that I have a very good memory, I can easily link people and things. I know from almost all my thousands of contacts who, who is who, where they are at the moment, what they are doing and if they are trustworthy. The advantage is that I never worked for any organization which meant I had to build my network myself and now many people and organizations depend on the network I have built. No question is hard for me to answer, whether you urgently need a donated ambulance, seek transportation for an injured person to a hospital in Europe, or you need a contact from an embassy, I can arrange it all.

I also found out that I am not a social person, in terms of organization I have things in order, but a dinner with someone without an underlying reason such as a consultation I do not start. I don't have the time for it and I don't want to have any background information from both the volunteers and the Ukrainians about their private lives. First, I didn't come there because I was looking for friendships. Second, it is not possible to do this work while also knowing the backgrounds of all the Ukrainian people who come your way, even if it is only a fraction of their story. The stories are too gruesome. I already get enough to read in the group apps and all the news info I get through my channels. In Poland, where I started volunteering, at the beginning I was the only female driver in Poland and the surrounding area, therefore I got all the rides with both the women and children who had been raped by the Russians. I had to take them within Poland but also in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to safe places, mostly in the mountains in monasteries. At these times it was difficult that I didn't speak the language, a hand on a shoulder or offering a handkerchief was all I could do, or when emotions got too high I could always call a Ukrainian interpreter."