Girls realize a hoop dream: Helping the people of Ukraine

A passion for basketball led two Great Neck girls to host a Hoops for Humanity fundraiser to collect money for Northwell Health’s Ukrainian Relief Fund, which was launched earlier this year to aid those affected by the war.

As part of their bat mitzvah projects, Abby Podwall, 12, and Tori Sobiecki, 13, teamed up to host the event at St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church in Great Neck last Thursday. The fundraiser consisted of 50 participants playing games of basketball skill and winning prizes, along with collecting donations. The girls raised more than $5,000 for the victims of the war in Ukraine, organizers said.

“So, I heard about what was going on in the news, with my friend Tori, and we thought, 'How can we include something we love to do into helping Ukraine?' and we thought basketball was a great way to do it,” Abby said.

The girls are teammates on Great Neck North’s middle school and Great Neck St. Aloysius CYO teams, Tori said. She said the fundraiser was important to them because they “wanted to do our part in helping the people of Ukraine.”

“It showed me that I can help other people and I could do it in a way that I love,” Tori said. “It felt really good.”

Abby’s mother, Barbara Podwall, who is a radiologist at Northwell Health in Manhasset, helped coordinate the event along with the Northwell's global health team.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, an untold number of Ukrainian citizens have been killed and millions more have fled.

Northwell Health’s Director of Global Health Dr. Eric Cioe-Peña, who helped create the Ukrainian Relief Fund, said he was “very proud of these two young people for taking the initiative.”

“I commend that attitude and that desire to impact the world that they live in, and when they see an injustice, they try to raise funds and awareness to try to change it,” Cioe-Peña said. “I’m inspired by these two young women and I’m happy that we’re able to take that money and put it toward a meaningful partnership that will do good in Ukraine."

The relief fund has collected over $210,000 from more than 700 individual donors, he said. The funds go directly to the health system’s relief partner Doctors Without Borders, a nongovernmental international humanitarian medical organization, which is providing medical assistance and supplies to the people of Ukraine. Cioe-Peña added that Northwell already has sent over 18,000 pounds of medical supplies to Ukraine directly.

“We are continuing to look for ways that we can support through telemedicine and supply shipments to facilities in western and eastern Ukraine," Cioe-Peña said.

As Tori and Abby gear up for their bat mitzvahs, in May and June, the mission of social action of their synagogue, Temple Beth-El of Great Neck, has been on full display. 

“What I’m more proud of is over the course of the project how much more it began to mean to them, and how much they started to realize how important and vital their project is toward raising the money for people that are just going through the horrors that we see on TV every day,” Tori’s mother, Danna Sobiecki, said.