Help keep the Ukrainian refugee center safe.

Hello,

This is Shin Soyeon, an intern of PeaceWinds Korea.

On October 1st, we went to Palanca, the border about 3 hours drive from Chisinau. There is UNHCR’s temporary refugee shelter.

The shelter workers interview refugees who have just crossed the border for three hours and provide a medical checkup and help refugees to get on a bus that will drop them to desired region.

In the early days, more than 30 buses and several thousand people entered the refugee shelter a day, but now it has reduced to 50~100.

There are two buses to Chisinau in UNHCR come for Ukraine refugees at 2 and 6 o'clock, and one, IOM’s bus, to Romania at 6 o'clock.

UN-related organizations say that it is forbidden to move without specific information about a certain situation or person. That is why they have to interview a refugee for three hours at UNHCR. I cannot imagine how hard it would be to give three-hours interview to prove your status when you just had fled the war.

UNHCR refugee shelter is also started winter preparation, and they asked Peacewinds Korea to help with refugees’ winter cloth.

I went to another temporary shelter, which had only four bed tents, a place to eat, and a toilet. Currently 10 people living there by their choice, but in the beginning there were 5-7 thousand people, so you can imagine a condition that would have been worse than it is now.

NCUM(National Congress of Ukrainians in Moldova), which received new refugees the day before (September 30th 19:00), was informed that the support they were receiving from other organizations to send refugees to Germany would end on October 12th. NCUM said that it is quite expensive to provide refugees with temporary place, even if they were going to families which had agreed to accept refugees. The government doesn't have enough budget to support them, and NCUM already has more than 55 refugees, when they can accommodate only 35.

We also interviewed refugees, who entered NCUM the day before. They said that they really miss their life in Ukraine before the war, their jobs were bombed and destroyed over the night, and they added that the most terrifying thing was seeing dead people bodies on the streets.

These people just had fled a war, and they had no plans or specific skills. They don't speak English and have never been abroad, but now they have to go to Germany to make a living.

The children I met here seemed so bright and innocent. So I didn't want to ask anything about the war. The children wanted to take a picture with Peace Winds Korea. We communicated through translator. They gave their names and helped with correct pronunciation.

I couldn’t speak Russian at all, but now I can introduce myself in Russian. “Privet, Menya jabut Soyeon. Kak tebya jabut?”. It means “Hello. My name is Soyeon. What is your name?” :)

I'm learning a lot here, not just Russian. We are thinking about what we can do to help everyone we met here in Moldova to live a better life.

Please continue to support us. So we can support them. Thank you.