Update from Ukraine
The Project Kesher Ukraine (PKU) staff celebrated Purim to the best of their ability, reading Megilat Esther virtually together and raising a glass of wine from wherever they are, amidst their humanitarian efforts.
Project Kesher has supported 130 Ukrainian women and their families whose lives have been uprooted, now refugees throughout Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Moldova, Georgia, and Bulgaria. $42,527 in grants have been distributed to women traveling with children, the elderly, and people with disabilities who are evacuating and approaching borders without money or paperwork. Mini grants of cash are actually lifesaving, as this helps women take care of their families independently, and with dignity, keeping them all safe. Here are a few stories from families we supported in the last week:
Tatiana and her husband (55 years old) live with her older brother with special needs Alexander, 80 years old. On March 8, 2022 this year they were in their house in the village of Nalivaykovka, Makarov district, Kyiv region, during the shelling. A shell hit the house, taking out the roof and causing a fire. They managed to escape but had no chance to save anything else but themselves. They lost all of their documents, credit cards and belongings. Their house is irreparable.
Christina is a hairdresser, a single mother with a 10-year daughter who fled from Kyiv on March 15, 2022. They are now refugees in Poland, alone. Six months ago she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She should have been undergoing further medical examination last month and no treatment was available. She will now have to deal with this while looking for work and taking care of her child in a foreign country.
A big family originally from Donetsk has suffered great losses. When the war broke out in 2014, they were forced to leave their home and move to Kyiv with their four children. At that time the kids were 8 years old twins, a 7 years old, and a 5 years old. It was a very difficult period in their lives, they had to start over from nothing. At that time volunteers helped this family a lot: they rented an apartment for them, bought clothes for parents and children, bought beds for children, provided food. The parents found new jobs, children grew up in Kyiv, life had improved, and they felt confident in their stable future. But on February 24, 2020 their lives were shattered again. Adults lost their jobs again. The children are scared, startled by every sound. They do not understand why war came into their lives again. Currently they stay in Kyiv, they are not planning to leave Kyiv. They believe in Ukraine.
Project Kesher continues supporting evacuations by bus from Kyiv, Lviv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Ternopil. This week alone, this project evacuated 900 people and are making temporary arrangements for those in need, including providing temporary places to stay, groceries and floor mattresses upon arrival.
Now that the intensity of evacuations from Kyiv has decreased, the bus company managed to establish a system to assist volunteer groups across Ukraine that are engaged in the evacuation of refugees from areas under fire. A few stories from the Kyiv-based bus company taking heroic trips to evacuate Ukrainians:
Sent buses from Kyiv to Lviv and Ternopil
Supported evacuation of people from Chernihiv and delivery of humanitarian aid.
Set up a headquarters and warehouse in Chernihiv to provide medicine, equipment, products, and hot food to the area, and humanitarian assistance at metro stations.
Evacuation from and delivery of products, medicines, and food to Irpin.
A group helps evacuate people from Ternopil to the Polish border for free, daily, up to 20 buses.
A group provides humanitarian aid to residents of the Kyizian region, settlements which are very difficult to reach due to destroyed bridges.
The Higher Educational Institution of Ukoopspilka "Poltava University of Economics and Trade" has been housing refugees of the cities of Kharkiv, Okhtyrka, Sumy, Trostyanets and the towns of Donetsk region in their dormitories from the first days of the war. Every day at least 30-50 new evacuated people arrive at the dorms. Some continue their way west, but others have lost all their property and stay in university dorms. The Department of Food Technology has provided food, using the equipment of the university to feed 100 to 140 people every day.
A group transporting humanitarian food aid across Kharkiv, Kiev, Mariupol by buses. Humanitarian food aid.
Brothers in Kherson, Ukraine, providing food aid for those who can't afford it.
Father from Severo, Donetsk, evacuates people every day. Volunteers calm them down, feed them, give them the opportunity to wash and take them to the railway stations. Mothers with children or orphan children are taken by buses to Western Ukraine. Over the past 2 days 283 people were evacuated, with about 10 buses.
Volunteers took people out of Kharkiv with a bus and assembled a team of brave sprinters, drivers and 1 Polish volunteer on the bus. 3 shelters have been evacuated and many orphanages. Volunteers here invite refugees to stay in the shelter for 200 people, which was opened near the Dnieper, and then they help families move west. 725 people have been evacuated in this way.
Project Kesher is hearing from activists in Ukraine and those crossing the border into other parts of Europe that traffickers are targeting Ukrainian women refugees. There are windows of time where we can educate women about identifying trafficking situations and how to avoid them, as they approach the border and immediately after they have crossed a border. Project Kesher and Project Kesher Ukraine with the Bulgarian Fund for Women are piloting a campaign to raise awareness and provide critical information to all refugees entering Bulgaria, including contacts for rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, anti-trafficking organizations and hotlines. PKU staff member Galina Sadirova remains in Ukraine and has translated these and other critical resources for Ukrainian refugees. PKU Team member now in Bulgaria, Tetiana Hetsilevych, is connecting with local humanitarian resources to verify and understand their services and will begin to serve as a resource for Ukrainian women refugees in Bulgaria. PKU will use this model and replicate it in each country where there are Ukrainian refugees. The team will identify a coordinator, local resources, and disseminate information to protect women and children from trafficking and exploitation in their vulnerable state.
“We were evacuated from Harkiv. We lived in the outskirts of the city, which is shelled more than any other area. Along the way we stayed overnight with different people who let us in their homes - we had to make those stops, because it was very difficult to cover long distances with little children. Together we rented a house in the Transcarpathian (Zakarpatye) region in the village of Novoselytsya. We are two families: my mother, my husband and three children 5, 10, 14 years old, my sister (who is 68, her husband died six months ago, all their money had been spent to fight his terrible disease) and her children: 20 and 14 years old; The other family is the one of my friend, her mother, husband, two children 2 and 11 years old, and her sister with her son 14 years old. We also have 3 dogs with us. Young men were immediately registered for military service. My friend's husband was conscripted: today he is already on his way to the military registration and enlistment center, the 20-year-old boy with us was given a one-month deferment from service, my husband, as the father of a large family and the only one of us who has a job, was allowed to remain with us. Now he is relocating the business from Harkiv to Western Ukraine. We also volunteers by helping our men in Harkiv, identifying the needs of Harkiv hospital for emergency care, finding medicines and coordinating their delivery.”