Humanitarian Activities During the War (WFWP Ukraine)
Written by: Anna Kalmatskaya
War in Ukraine affected the whole country. Some places were seriously damaged by hostilities. The western part of Ukraine received a lot of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and also found itself on the verge of a humanitarian crisis.
According to the statistics, almost 15 million Ukrainians were displaced from their homes. Six to seven million left the country and eight million became internally displaced, moving to safer places in Ukraine.
Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP) Ukraine has actively worked since the war outbreak, though the majority of its members also joined the number of refugees and IDPs.
The main focus of the activity was to help people who found themselves in difficult circumstances during the war and provide humanitarian assistance to those in need.
Having established cooperation with the local administration in western Ukraine, WFWP Ukraine provides assistance with food, bedding, household items and disposable tableware for the IDP center. The center serves more than three thousand internally displaced from different parts of Ukraine, providing them with free accommodation, food, and humanitarian aid.
In cooperation with the Polish Humanitarian Staff, WFWP volunteers provided Ukrainian citizens who had arrived in Poland with basic necessities and helped to find temporary accommodation. In cooperation with partners in Zhytomyr city, WFWP also organized a corridor for transporting medicines to Ukraine for local residents.
Responding to a call for help from Kharkiv, which is under constant shelling and bombing, our organization sent several parcels for a group of people who remained in a multi-story building. These are three families, ten people, who have been hiding for the third month in the basement. Among them is a disabled child Danylo, in a wheelchair and a seriously ill elderly woman Iryna. We sent several parcels with food and medicine. There is only one post office that continues to operate in Kharkiv city and there is a huge problem with food shortage.
At the end of April, Ukraine celebrated the Holy week, starting with the Willow Sunday and finishing with the Easter Sunday on April 24, 2022. Unfortunately, Russia's government has rejected an Easter ceasefire, despite the calls of the United Nations chief, and Holy week started and continued with missiles launched on Ukraine.
On the occasion of Easter, with the support of WFWP Europe, we organized a festive table for displaced families, including 23 children, on Easter eve, trying to create at least some holiday in difficult conditions and in non-holiday circumstances.
