LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Starting late last month, a group of high school students at Lake George Jr./Sr. High School started a two-week-long mission. The teenagers spent two weeks gathering funds to purchase materials to benefit Ukrainian refugees, to be sent through a family member of a student at the high school.

This week, the total was announced. School communications officer Tara Sullivan said that the group of students raised $1,546.08 for Ukraine.

Those funds will go to Saint Michael’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Hudson, where volunteers led by Reverend Wolodymir Paszko will use them to purchase medical equipment and daily life goods for refugees fleeing danger as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues. Reverend Paszko’s grandson, Sasha Paszko, is a senior at Lake George High School. As someone with 100% Ukrainian heritage himself, the student body quickly rallied around Sasha and his grandfather’s cause in the last month.

Supplies are going out in multiple ways, One is through a relief stream operated by shipping company Dnipro LLC. Other donations will be sent to direct connections the Paszko family has in Ukraine, so that bandages, IVs, splints and dozens of other types of needed medical supplies can arrive in the places where the need is the direst.

“My father has been shipping clothes and donated items to Ukraine through them for years,” said Steve Paszko, Sasha’s father and Reverend Wolodymir’s son, in a statement that was posted on the school district website during the drive. “We are not donating money to anyone. All money donated is being converted to priority medical supplies. There are no administrative costs as we are donating our time and effort to coordinate this.”

The effort at the high school was organized by the Lake George High School Student Council and Anti-Bullying Committee. Collection cups were placed in school guidance rooms, and a dropbox for medical supplies was stationed in the nurse’s office.