History graduate establishes humanitarian organization, prepares for trip overseas to serve Ukraine refugees

While many members of Liberty University’s 2022 graduating class will be starting new jobs in the weeks following Commencement, Mark Chapman, 25, who is completing his B.S. in History through Liberty University Online Programs, will be overseas driving supplies from Poland to the border of Ukraine for refugees impacted by the ongoing Russian invasion.

Chapman will be making the trip later this month with 10 members from his humanitarian aid-focused nonprofit, the Order of the Silver Star, an independent fraternal order he founded in 2016. The team will pick up clothes, medical supplies, and non-perishable foods in Warsaw, Poland, and drive them in box trucks to a warehouse to the border near Lviv, where supplies will be distributed to the refugees

“A lot of these people, unfortunately, had to leave everything behind,” Chapman said. “So what we will try to do is fill that gap a little bit by making sure that people have at least the necessities in order to keep on going.”

He said the Order of the Silver Star is based on knightly orders of the past. With core values and pillars of honor, courage, loyalty, respect, faith, honesty, creativity, and history, it exists to aid the defenseless as Christ commands believers in His teachings. The Order offers food distribution, donation drives, renovation projects, clean-up events, and Meals on Wheels, among other services.

For the past month, the Order has been volunteering with various organizations in Cleveland, where Chapman lives, to collect and ship supplies to countries surrounding Ukraine. Now, Chapman said he is overjoyed that he and his comrades will be able to bring some of these supplies even closer to their recipients.

“I am incredibly excited,” he said. “It’s kind of a shock for me to be able to do something like this, and my heart has weighed so heavily since we’ve been loading up these supplies.”

In 2015, after graduating from high school, Chapman entered the United States Air Force Reserves as a client services technician (which included a 2019 deployment to Southwest Asia) while also working various jobs in the IT field outside of military relations.

“I ended up joining the Air Force Reserves because I knew the reserves were a good opportunity to both get military experience while still building a career on the outside and potentially work on school,” he said.

After a year of working in the military reserves, Chapman saw the fruits of military comradery, which encouraged him to pursue his lifelong dream of starting a nonprofit.

“My brother and I had been toying with the idea for years,” he said. “My friends and I knew that it was something we wanted to do. We were just trying to figure out where we could go to take this. We wanted something that could both fulfill a godly purpose and also enrich our lives and the lives of others.”

Because most fraternal orders today consist of older members, “We wanted to show the world that there are good young men out there from different ages and different backgrounds who are coming together to do something good,” Chapman said.

With around 15 men prepared to join, Chapman and his brother launched the Order of the Silver Star, a name that points to the knights of the medieval time period who devoted themselves to productivity and chivalrous acts of service.

The nonprofit has met local, national, and global needs. When the COVID-19 pandemic started to affect communities, the Order filled in filled in wherever it could help — from assisting Meals on Wheels to aiding area churches and other service organizations.

“Most nonprofits’ members are generally people over the age of 50, and those are the people who would be the most affected by COVID potentially,” Chapman said. “So we reached out to a lot of places and asked if they needed people to come help out.”

Now, the group is prepared for its largest-scale service project since their formation.

“It began with the astonishing fact that in this age that we are all living in, something like this (the Russian invasion) could happen,” he said.

Cleveland hosts one of the highest number of Ukrainian residents of any U.S. city, so Chapman began hearing of how great the need was for supplies and volunteers in Ukraine. Soon after making connections and forming relationships with Cleveland organizations who are sending supplies overseas for refugees, the Order received an invitation to come serve in Poland.

“We decided that it is something that we could do,” he said. “The difference that we’d be able to make just by helping them run these logistics over there and drive supplies to the border would be very helpful.”

While serving the needy remains his passion, Chapman is grateful for how Liberty has allowed him to pursue his dream of achieving a college education while working a full-time IT job.

“Liberty seemed super military friendly and is a Christian school, so all of the pieces seemed to fit where I needed them to,” he said. “Taking classes has been a really good experience because it allows me to work and fulfill my reserve commitments. With Liberty Online, you can do the courses at your pace.”

“I really, really have loved all of the content of the classes that I have taken with Liberty, especially the history ones which have been fascinating,” Chapman added. “It has very much broadened the scope of my historical knowledge and it’s also been a way that I can scratch that itch that I have for the hobby of history. It’s fascinating.”