HELP for war refugees from Ukraine in Poland

The War Continues, our challenges remain, Our local Ukrainian population remains stable at around 2000 refugees. The characteristic is that a number of these are now settling into our community, whereas a number are still transient moving onwards into Europe or returning back to Ukraine.  New arrivals from war areas still arrive on a regular basis and most of our basic support services are still required. Poland is still very much in the front line of the refugee crisis although media coverage tells less and less of the story.

Our food collection and food distribution network still supports a lot of people. In September food support was need for 485 people which was higher than the 375 people requesting help in August. So far this month we are support 496 people, children, adults and seniors.

Our Centre for Helping Refugees  works every day. The services provided include legal advice and help with documentation for new arrivals. We, through the Centre  which employs three people in an administrative capacity, we also employ five teachers which provide support in local schools for Ukrainian children and we still have a special kindergarten for 16 very special little damaged  tots who need very special help.  We also provide support and additional learning for around 60 Ukrainian Children in our community.

Key to the integration and social inclusion of our Ukrainians is the provision of Polish Language courses. We currently have the resources to provide these to 30-40 people at any one time. This activity is in high demand from the refugees.

Finally we are providing psychological support to between 30-40 adults every month. The support is typically for Stress Disorders, often a result of the person coming from a war zone and also for bereavement  mostly for  fathers, husbands and  brothers die in the war back home.

It is for us still a difficult time as a Community Foundation, not least because to maintain these activities we need to continuously seek funding above and beyond the normal funding we need to maintain the Foundation and its “normal” activities.  As always we sincerely thankyou for all the support received. No amount is too small. This is becoming a long term project as the conflict seems no closer to any sort of resolution soon and the challenges we face continue.

GlobalGiving is an excellent and efficient way to support us in our refugee work  and we hope that you can carry on donating to support our important work.

The  Conflict in Ukraine still has a profound effect on the day to day working of our Foundation and much of our effort continues to be directed towards support of Ukrainian families in our region and across Poland.  The refugee population in our immediate vicinity which is the main focus of our support still runs into the thousands, and every day new people arrive to Zywiec.

Our ad hoc arrangements at the beginning of the crisis are becoming more stabilized and established, We recently moved  the  Refugee Help Center to more “fit for purpose”  and longer term accommodation.  This move provided more space for the growing number of support workers and very much improved working conditions for staff and for visitors.  It also houses a pre-school for Ukrainian children and a workshop/ training unit for one of our Ukrainian vocational training groups.  Such is the demand for help we currently work in shifts and we deal with problems, on average,  for more than 500 Ukrainians monthly.

Much of this work continues to be in providing free advice: legal, psychological, Polish language courses and professional courses. We support Ukrainians providing information on their legal status and rights,  making applications and translating  filling documentation for work and social security payments and tax advice.

Another large part of the support provided  is related to medical issues including finding specialized medical treatments, registering visits to doctors and for tests, help purchasing medicines and interpreting during doctor visits.

We still provide also basic needs support with finding housing and also providing a food bank. Our wish is that we can assimilate our Ukraine guests/new residents into our community as quickly and with as little stress as possible.

The level of engagement in these tasks remains high and it seems we will be doing these tasks for a lot longer time but in order to function properly we still very much rely on public donations  especially as State funding is now limited and is seen to be declining.  Please continue to donate to us. Every cent is needed and used well!