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Steve Sirek and Kathy Carter both volunteer their time as part of the leadership team at Orphan Grain Train of Lincoln.
Ethan, 10, often volunteers with his grandmother, Cheryl Peterson, on a Saturday morning. “He’s a hard worker and really likes doing it,” says Peterson. Sometimes his younger sister Isabella comes along, too.
Orphan Grain Train (OGT) is a volunteer network that ships donated food, clothing, medical supplies and other needed items to people in 69 countries, including the United States.
Headquartered in Norfolk, Nebraska, it’s the volunteers in Lincoln and 28 other self-supporting regional collection centers who gather relief supplies and raise money to get humanitarian aid to where it’s needed most – whether to support tornado victims in Kentucky or Ukrainians displaced by war.
OGT of Lincoln recently moved to a bigger, better warehouse and work space near 56th and Cornhusker Highway. It’s a charity that does important work throughout the world with little public awareness in the Lincoln community.
Both branch manager Steve Sirek, a retired pastor, and secretary/treasurer Kathy Carter, a retired nurse practitioner, immediately burst into laughter when asked if either received compensation for the near full-time hours they each commit to OGT every week.
“That’s why OGT has a four-star rating on Charity Navigator,” said Carter. “We’re all volunteers except for the 14 people who work in Norfolk.”
What that means is for every dollar raised, 98 cents goes directly to humanitarian aid and 2 cents to administrative costs. OGT-Lincoln raises its own dollars to cover local operating expenses like rent, utilities or furnishings. (Uniformly sized shipping boxes, labels, transportation, etc., are furnished by the Norfolk headquarters.) This year was OGT’s first with Give to Lincoln Day, receiving $5,300 in donations.
Orphan Grain Train started after Pastor Ray Wilke of Grace Lutheran Church in Norfolk returned from a mission trip to Latvia in 1992. The humanitarian crisis he’d witnessed and the pleas for help made an impression and fueled the need to do something. He teamed up with his good friend Clayton Andrews, president of Andrews Van Lines, and the Orphan Grain Train, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, came to be.
The duo envisioned train carloads of donated grain from this nation’s bread basket shipped to Latvia, where it would be used to feed starving children. Sirek, one of OGT’s first employees, went to Russia and Latvia intending to set up three distribution centers. That proved unfeasible for numerous reasons.
With the help of his interpreter, Sirek visited with farmers and other locals and learned that grain was not what they needed. Americans were flooding the market with grain, and bins were full. But other needs were numerous. OGT listened, and a year later delivered its first shipment, a container of quilts and clothing, to Riga, Latvia.
OGT officially rolled into Lincoln in fall 2020. By Oct. 6, 2020, its first shipment was delivered to the Norfolk warehouse en route to its final destination.
“We've already sent over five plane loads of humanitarian aid [for Ukrainian refugees},” said Sirek. “When I say ‘we,’ I'm talking OGT as a whole. But we gathered a lot of it here and sent it to Norfolk, and they put it on cargo planes.”
The first time was in February. The Norfolk warehouse manager called Carter about getting some donations and said, “Oh, by the way, the plane leaves next week.”
“It was one of those holy s*** moments,” Carter recounted. She asked what was needed and set out to see what she could muster. Carter called a student volunteer at Lincoln Lutheran High School and the administration at her church to ask them to put the word out. It snowballed from there.
By that Friday afternoon, cars were lined up in the school parking lot to drop off supplies, collection bins at churches were overflowing, “and on Saturday and Sunday, we couldn't even get in the front door of the warehouse because there were so many donations. It was overwhelming and donations kept coming,” she shared. Lincoln alone sent a semi-trailer load of supplies to Norfolk.
“We didn't send clothes,” added Sirek, “because we knew other charities were sending clothes. We sent bar soap, feminine hygiene products, toothbrushes, acetaminophen, towels, medical supplies ... diapers, oh my gosh … the diapers – for adults to newborns.”
Later, in a separate effort, Lincoln-based Frontier Ag Inc. worked with OGT-Lincoln to donate 5.24 tons of supplies for Ukrainian refugees out of deference to employees who had strong ties to the country, and because it was just the right thing to do.
OGT’s aid recipients are all vetted, and Carter likes that. “We know who is going to receive it – usually someone OGT has built a relationship with – and they have the means to transport and distribute it where it needs to be.”
Not all the aid leaves the country. OGT supports local communities, Native American reservations and more. OGT also goes to disaster areas, sometimes with a portable village that includes a chapel, kitchen, restrooms/showers, generator and bedrooms.
“We can be self-sufficient while we help with clean-up, building, etc.” explained Carter.
Once a month, OGT-Lincoln picks up an entire trailer full of medical supplies from Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital that are unused but cannot be restocked, or are left behind by patients – dressings, Ambu bags, trach kits, sheets, gowns, orthopedic supplies, etc. OGT also receives similar supplies from area hospices and others in the community. Volunteers have sorted and packed 1,152 boxes of medical supplies in the past 12 months.
OGT-Lincoln is also a distribution conduit for school kits, Mercy Meals, infant care kits, and Days for Girls sustainable menstrual health solutions – all made locally by volunteers.
Volunteering at OGT-Lincoln is often a multi-generational experience, from first graders to octogenarians. It’s great for families, kids or groups needing community service hours or projects (and a safe place to do them), and even a social event for some volunteers with developmental disabilities. “That’s another thing I like about OGT – it’s so relational,” explained Carter.
For more information about the charity, see www.ogt.org. To get involved or get details about OGT of Lincoln, contact Steve Sirek at 402-416-1972 or sbsirek@gmail.com. Note: Unless monetary donations are specifically earmarked for OGT-Lincoln, they’ll go to the general OGT account.
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Steve Sirek and Kathy Carter both volunteer their time as part of the leadership team at Orphan Grain Train of Lincoln.
Ethan, 10, often volunteers with his grandmother, Cheryl Peterson, on a Saturday morning. “He’s a hard worker and really likes doing it,” says Peterson. Sometimes his younger sister Isabella comes along, too.
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