For Mission’s seventh issue, we partnered with care.org to provide relief to Ukranian’s fleeing war.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine five months ago, over 6.8 million people have fled to neighboring countries, and more than 8 million have been internally displaced. The situation has turned into a Europe-wide crisis, with money pouring into Ukraine from worldwide donations and refugees sending money back home to support a country suffering from a costly and economically damaging war. One NGO providing donations to efforts in Ukraine is CARE.org, which provides relief to the most vulnerable Ukrainians affected by the conflict. To help alleviate the situation on the ground for those fleeing the war, Mission will contribute $10,000 in profits from Mission’s latest issue to CARE’s Ukraine Crisis Fund.
Many fundraising drives, especially when the invasion first began, were raising money for Ukraine’s military, but CARE.org’s Ukraine Crisis Fund focuses solely on humanitarian aid. “We are not affiliated in any way with military operations,” CARE’s press officer Anisa Husain tells Mission over Zoom.
Mission’s donation will go directly to the charity’s program in Poland to provide aid to families who sought safety there (Poland, which borders Ukraine, has been the primary destination for those fleeing the conflict.) According to Anisa, this includes “shelter, cash cards, and the CARE teacher program,” for which 600 Ukrainian-speaking teachers have been hired since April to help refugee children acclimate to schools in Poland. Daria Khrystenko is a teacher who speaks Polish and Ukrainian who participated in the program. “when children come, and they are of course traumatized, they don’t speak the [Polish] language, and they are with new people, it’s good to have Ukrainian teachers.” She talks about the benefits for the adults, providing jobs for Ukrainian teachers fleeing the war, and giving peace of mind to refugee parents. “It’s good for parents because they know they can trust that there is someone to talk to in their language. It happened to me when I was teaching at a school – the parents would text me and call me asking all kinds of questions: how to apply for this, how to do that. There were many questions, so it’s good for parents to have someone to communicate with in their own language.” Khrystenko explains. Effectively, she became a community liaison figure for other refugees. Thanks to her, Ukrainian children are excited to go to school, which allows their parents to focus on finding work to support themselves, as government assistance is relatively small, and most are single women who had to leave their partners behind to serve in the Ukrainian military.
In addition to CARE’s Poland chapter, the charity strives to support those still in Ukraine via its German arm, CARE Germany. Raegan Hodge, who is in Poland working as part of CARE’s crisis response, says that a total of 380,932 people still in Ukraine have been reached with humanitarian assistance, “most of which is food assistance in the cities of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kyiv and Kharkiv and well as psychosocial support, health, and other services.” CARE.ORG has been working with local organizations and services that are experienced and know the land best, as well as the Slovakian and Ukrainian Red Crosses, who all need added capacity and funds. Notably, they have been working with Lyudmyla Yankina, a 38-year-old woman who lives in an emergency shelter in a basement in Kyiv. As a one-woman charity, she transports food, medicine, and other desperately needed supplies to people as far as 150 kilometers away who have no one else to care for them. “I pray every day that the missiles lying on the roads don’t explode while we are driving along there,” she tells CARE. Lyudmyla, with other volunteers, delivers up to 2,000 meals daily and visits 200 people who need regular medication at home. She has a medical background as a nurse, so she refuses to evacuate Ukraine to do what she can to help those left behind during the conflict.
But despite the world’s well-documented efforts to assist those in need, help is dwindling. “At first, there was so much generosity. Ukraine was all over the news, people were responsive, people were opening up their homes, if anyone spoke a little Russian or Ukrainian, they were working in train stations or bringing food to pick-up sites, but unfortunately, we’re four months in now, and there’s been a bit of fatigue in Polish society, which there’s bound to be,” says Hodge.
She talks of a “second wave of issues with accommodation, particularly as the situation is rapidly deteriorating in the east of Ukraine, causing many refugees to arrive in Poland more traumatized and vulnerable. “Now is when they need help most, and it’s now that resources are also getting stretched thin. Every person also has their individual needs… and you need personalized support. It takes a lot of people and a lot of capacity to really help people in the way they need.” Because of this, CARE is trying to strategize, working with governments and other organizations to position themselves as a backup to provide long-lasting support when NGOs and volunteers become fatigued.
Images courtesy of: CARE
