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.