Project Aid & Rescue

Jeff Kaminsky

Founder & President

Jeff lives in Northbrook, IL and is a volunteer first responder with the Northbrook Fire Department CERT or Community Emergency Response Team.  In March of 2022, at the beginning of the Russian War against Ukraine, Jeff, appalled by the situation, decided to not look the other way and he stepped up to help.  Jeff organized a humanitarian mission and flew to Berlin to assist Ukrainians who were fleeing the war. After initially assisting with the care and resettlement of 200 orphans rescued from Odessa, Jeff began volunteering at the Berlin Central Bus Station where nearly 40 buses of refugees were arriving daily from Ukraine. Most of the refugees were women and children who fled for days or weeks to escape Russian bombings and terror.

Having seen their exhausted faces and learning that many people had not bathed nor any place to sleep, Jeff began renting hotel rooms for the most vulnerable refugees, including women, children, the elderly, and people suffering from cancer or who needed other medical assistance. He began using social media to share with friends and family back home about the dire situation he had encountered in Berlin. Jeff’s friends, family and local community were moved by his posts generated $75,000 in donations. To date, Jeff has provided hotel rooms to more than 1,500 refugees.

As the situation in Ukraine continued to deteriorate, Jeff began working with other volunteers and organizations to provide a range of aid including providing food and medicine to Ukrainians; organizing medical extractions from within Ukraine; bringing busloads of refugees out of Ukraine, and working to find semi-permanent refugee housing in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and The Netherlands.

Upon returning home, Jeff could not turn his back on Ukraine.  Jeff founded Project Aid & Rescue, a grassroots volunteer 501(c)(3) charity organization based in the United States, whose purpose is to provide humanitarian aid in the form of medical supplies, food, air and bus evacuations and provide aid to the people of Ukraine. Jeff has been instrumental in shipping tons of medical supplies to Ukraine by both airfreight and sea freight.  By October 2022, PAR and its partner organizations shipped more than $2.4 Million of antibiotics (72,000 individual courses) by airfreight to front line hospitals, along with 200,000 cohesive bandages, 800,000 gauze sponges, 21,000 IFAK trauma kits and humanitarian aid valued at nearly $30 Million to save the lives of the Ukrainian People.