August 3, 2023
54,194 people evacuated from danger to date
318 people evacuated from danger this week
37 trips into the deoccupied and frontline territories
Since June, our teams averaged 37 trips to the frontline areas and zones of active bombardment, such as Kherson. Last week again the teams we support made 37 trips, evacuating people and bringing help. This is only part of our network's total output, as most of the people we help are in cities that we don’t consider to be on the frontline anymore. In this report you can see progress on the other projects from dehumidifying and disinfecting flooded buildings to evacuations from the occupied zones or children programs that teams manage to push forward all across Ukraine.
Stories
Help in the Occupied Territories
We continue to proudly support efforts to help people living under occupation, whose lives have become completely untenable to evacuate to Ukraine or in some cases to their families temporarily residing in nearby free countries. 134 people were evacuated last week. 12 of them were people with limited mobility that use wheelchairs or strollers and need to take long sitting breaks when they are on the move. Some of them were completely paralyzed. Some evacuees refuse to go without their pets and, to accommodate these cases, volunteers evacuated 12 pets as well.
Meanwhile we helped 411 people in the occupied territories across 6 cities from low-income households, but who must stay and suffer under the occupation.
Evacuation for Eastern Frontline Towns. Fragments
Some of the stories volunteers share with us are difficult to process not only because they deal with human suffering, but also because they are so inconclusive and fragmentary. For us, however, it is yet another reason to admire their work, that keeps going despite all the uncertainty and danger.
Dobra Sprava is our key evacuation team, who evacuated 4,000 people since we started supporting them earlier this year. They shared this in passing in one of our chats:
“... Apologies for the delay… We had a request for targeted evacuation from Sviatohirsk. An elderly woman with limited mobility and her daughter. When our volunteers came, the woman was sitting by her dead daughter. And the grandma is such that she is hardly able to move or speak; we only understood she found her dead in the morning. Called the police, neighbors, after all the ‘procedures’ we brought the woman to Dnipro to her granddaughter. It was very hard to watch, the granddaughter meeting her grandma knowing about her mom already. This hit our drivers really hard, especially the younger one who hadn’t yet seen a lot...Agree that doesn’t make sense to try and find out exactly what happened… ”
Celebrating Children Volunteers in Frontline Villages
Serhiy T of Vilny Lyudi Vilna Kraina traveled to a unique celebration last week in the village of Ridne that now sits about 50 miles away from the front line. Local children - also volunteers - got together and repaired a local “Club.” In Ukrainian villages villages use a building for all kinds of social occasions, such as movie nights. This building along with the local school and other larger structures was shattered by Russian bombs, but the kids decided to create a space for everyone to come together and succeeded. The entire town came to celebrate.
Serhiy, who has been helping this village, was invited as well. He and his church group packed sweet treats, sound equipment, toys, and games to organize a real party. Sergey says, “Imagine, for the last 1.5 years they have seen nothing but the war. The TV doesn’t work there, the Internet works occasionally, but not consistently, and that’s it! Most of the windows in the town are shattered, except for maybe one or two. And here they all were - dancing!”
Return of the Volunteer
In Oleksandr’s section below we mention many names each week, which are truly hard to keep track of. But each of them has a unique and fascinating path. Vadim was one the very first volunteers with whom Oleksandr worked to evacuate people from Irpin’ (near Kyiv) as the Russian army approached. Vadim then volunteered and served with honor in the armed forces.
Two months ago he was demobilized due to health problems, but a month later he came back to rejoin the humanitarian volunteer efforts. Two weeks ago he already traveled to Poland; this week he’s been helping with evacuation routes within Ukraine, and then drove to Germany and back dropping off aid in the Kharkiv region. Vadim’s story helps illustrate the immense role that the volunteer movement plays in the lives of Ukrainians.
Team summaries
Ihor Dobra Sprava (“Good Cause”)
16 trips to frontline areas
Evacuated 184 people from Sviatohirsk, Lyman, Kramatorsk, Kostyantynivka, Chasiv Yar and Kherson
Oleksandr D’s Volunteer Networks
Oleksandr S (Boyarka): delivered 2 tons of groceries to Ponyativka (Kherson Region) and 2.5 tons of groceries to Snihurivka District (Mykolayiv Region).
Vladyslav K (Mykolaiv): transported 35 tons of drinking water to Mykolaiv and Kherson.
Sandra S (Odesa): kitchen fed more than 1,900 people, many of them child evacuees from Kherson.
Yuri S (Vinnytsia): delivered 500 kg of clothes and 500 kg of groceries to the House of Mercy rehabilitation center (Vinnytsia Region).
Andriy P (Chernivtsi): brought 24 wheels for off-road vehicles and 28 boxes of sweets from Europe (by way of Kyiv) to Chernivtsi for further distribution.
Oleksandr Z (Lutsk): held 2 art therapy sessions for children with disabilities, and children of internally displaced people (IDPs), organized development camp for IDP children from from Kherson, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia, and helped 101 children with groceries and diapers.
Valery L (Rivne): brought 100 grocery sets, hygiene products, clothes and shoes to Kochubeivka (Kherson Region).
Natalia B (Kherson): distributed 40 dairy food kits to Kherson residents.
Vadym T (Kamin-Kashyrskyi): brought 1.5 tons of humanitarian aid from Germany for further distribution.
NGO Angelia
Delivered 1 ton of cornflakes from Bila Tserkva to Toretsk, Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka
Kseniia’s Team - NGO Livyj Bereh
7 roofs restored this week in Slatyne and other villages around Kharkiv
200 package delivered in Kherson region to Komyshany, Posad-Pokrovsk and Kherson
Kharkiv volunteer Darya delivered 202 aid packages in the besieged villages of Podoly, Zapadne and Kutkivka. Only 25 people remain in Podoly, out of 2,376 reported in Wikipedia.
We started on the last part of the project rebuilding a school in Boromlia, Sumy region. We look forward to this school reopening in September.
Karina’s Team - We Save Dnipro
65 people living in the shelter
Alena - Virgo
Kherson flood relief and clean up crews continue their work in between shelling, clearing 2 homes this week
37 more homeowners in Kherson received cleaning supplies from what Alena’s team left at the central hub on her last visit
Inna’s Team
22.7 tons of aid distributed to 7,950 people, plus 11,000 loaves of bread
Our volunteers from Kryvyi Rih are working at the site of Russia’s terrorist attack that destroyed a wing of a high rise, killing 6 and injuring 80.
Kherson flood relief efforts:
Huge amount of work completed, disinfected basements for three residential highrises (6-8 sections each).
Additionally disinfected 2 buildings, dehumidified 3 buildings, pumped water out of 2 buildings.
Completed 69 generator refuelings; there is a rumor that electricity can be soon restored in the neighborhood which would allow us to redirect the generators.
210 packages delivered to Berislav in the Kherson region. The supply routes into this city at the bank of Dnipro don’t work and the remaining residents are supplied by volunteers.
Trips to Porkovsk, Kupyansk, Marhanets - all in the frontline zone.
411 people helped in 6 cities in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
Tetiana’s Team - Dopomoha Poruch
Distributed 277 aid packages to internally displaced refugees in Smila.
Distributed aid in a summer camp that had been housing some of the refugees in Smila.
Pavel and Olena - Touch of Heart and Dawn of Hope
Mykolaiv was bombed earlier in the week; our team’s office also suffered some damage although not from a direct hit.
Team moving from the Polish border to its warehouse
1,411 people helped in the Mykolaiv office
The group organized a trip to Telehulsky Lyman for children from low-income families who have stayed in the city throughout the war.
265 people helped in villages in Mykolaiv and Kherson regions
3 tons of water delivered to Kobzartsi and Pavlo-Maryanivka
Also delivered hygienic products, garden tools, sweets and toys to Kobzartsy, Pavlo-Maryanivka and Prybuzke
Andriy - BF Pomahaem
30 people continue to stay in Voloske shelter
70 large family packages of hygienic products delivered to Kherson
Completed “dental health” project that provided stomatological services to 118 children in 72 families
Marina – Good Give Ukraine
Marina and her team were all sick this week, so no distribution took place.
Timur - Timur and Team
Delivered 250 aid packages to Slavyansk.
Another 250 packages around Saltivka, Kharkiv
A hundred special deliveries, with half for children and half for people with disabilities
Dina - Vilni Liudy – Vilna Krayina
Distributed 706 packages and mailed 58
At the regular distribution centers in Kremenchuk and Krasnokutsk every week families can receive donated goods such as clothing, bedding, baby food and formula, toys, pet food, and diapers
Serhiy T organized a celebration in the village of Ridne.
Bogdan - Vse robymo sami
42 food packages were given to families displaced by war.
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