Helping People in Need

WITH THE ONGOING WARS IN UKRAINE AND ISRAEL, THE NEED FOR HUMANITARIAN CARE, PARTICULARLY GENDERED HUMANITARIAN CARE, REMAINS STRONG.

Project Kesher Ukraine (PKU) and its humanitarian sister organization, the Women’s Opportunity Fund of Ukraine (WOF-UA) are at the forefront of responding to the wartime needs of Ukrainian women and girls and reaching women with critical information and life-saving resources. Embedding fully in the communities in which we provide assistance allows PKU to meet immediate needs, without duplicating the efforts of other NGOs. Less than 1% of international aid to Ukraine has been allocated to women and girls, and PKU and WOF-UA are hard at work advocating for this demographic.

PKU and WOF-UA has distributed 250 e-bicycles to Ukrainian healthcare workers, mostly women, supporting 100,000 monthly home visits to patients. It provides essential equipment to maternity wards, including a CPAP system to the Dnipro Clinical Hospital, saving the lives of 10 premature babies each month. Recently, they’ve seen a surge in requests for hygiene kits for pregnant women and new mothers, humanitarian packages for those injured by the war, and generators to help women cope with Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid. It has a program providing women with laptops, computer training, and staffing agency support to get them remote jobs. Since the start of the war, PKU and WOF-UA have provided hundreds of thousands of tons of food, thousands of medical and hygiene kits, and hundreds of generators for Jewish community centers, hospitals, and schools.

Project Kesher Ukraine and the Women’s Opportunity Fund provide information through digital channels in response to women’s needs:

emailing instructions for boiling or chemically purifying water

in the event there is a cholera outbreak.

disseminating instructional, culturally appropriate content

on the use of menstrual cups as a follow up to its distribution of these critical supplies.

maintaining a Telegram channel

staffed by healthcare professionals, specifically for pregnant people and new mothers.

As the war continues, Project Kesher and Project Kesher Ukraine communicate daily with our partners to discuss locations and areas of greatest need. We constantly adapt our joint purchases and distribution plans based on the insights of our trusted on-the-ground network. With funds on hand, we can make real-time commitments to meet the country’s most urgent needs.

Project Kesher Israel has been working closely with women immigrants and refugees in the Russian-speaking Ukrainian and Russian communities for the last 15 years

Although this community often lives close to the poverty line, most women in our network were able to put food on their tables through local programs and menial jobs prior to October 7th. Since the attack on Israel, that fragile system has completely collapsed and hundreds of women in our network no longer have food. The women in our network have gone from impoverished to desperate as they have lost even the most simple jobs cleaning homes and offices and caring for children and the elderly.