Submitted photo Patrick Stokes is headed back to Ukraine.

Fredonia resident Patrick Stokes is taking on a leadership role in Ukraine with the organization he volunteered with last year.

Stokes works for a charity that delivers pizza, made on-site in food trucks, to civilians in the war-torn country. The charity has two directors of operations, one in the eastern part of the country and the other in the western; Stokes was hired for the western position, based in Lviv.

“They want to avoid burnout, so six to eight weeks on and then two weeks off,” he said. “Out east (the directors are) very nomadic, they go from city to city. In Lviv we’re based out of a flat.”

Stokes will leave in mid-November and basically coordinate operations in the western part of the country. “The average day is wake up, go to the first site, set up pizza and serve,” he said. The pizza truck can serve two to three sites per day, if the workers are not in large towns.

“We bring a roving pizza party everywhere we go. We bring music, we bring smiles,” he said.

Though Stokes will usually be based in Lviv, he’ll rotate out east — where the bulk of the fighting is — when the pizza maestro there needs rest. There are also a couple fill-in coordinators if one of the regulars is unavailable.

Stokes works for Hopeful Charities, based out of Scotland. He explained that when he volunteered for the pizza partiers in 2023, Siobhan’s Trust was running the show. Siobhan’s Trust also does work in its native Scotland and its board of directors voted earlier this year to spin off its Ukraine pizza mission into a separate trust.

Stokes was purely a volunteer the last time he was in Ukraine, though even then he said he took on some leadership responsibilities. He was planning on going back anyway for another volunteer stint, “then this offer came completely from out of the blue a week ago.”

Stoles plans to document his latest stint in Ukraine to show the nation “on a human level, not a political level… Imagine if this was your life, imagine hearing drones every night and imagine having your kids go to school in bunkers.”

Stokes said he has been criticized for volunteering internationally when there are so many in need locally. He said he does plenty of local volunteering, but “this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

He added, “It’s so simple, handing someone some food, but it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”

Stokes sought to tout volunteerism in general. He said if people cannot volunteer for a legitimate charity, then they should donate to one, or at least share information about it.

Stokes even offered to help volunteers get to Ukraine. First-time volunteers in the country can be “basically escorted out” to wherever they are working, he said.

“If you’re interested in volunteering, obviously there’s local opportunities,” he said.

As for Ukraine, “if you’re asking, ‘Is it dangerous in Ukraine’? You’re automatically disqualified,” he laughed.

Stoles quipped, “I’m a thousand times more likely to get shot in America, but I’m a thousand times more likely to get blown up by a missile in Ukraine.”