Blog post written by Phillipa Tucker – Coordinator Eastern and Central Europe, EDF
EDF and CBM have been working with organisations of persons with disabilities across the central and Eastern Europe region to respond to the war in Ukraine since March 2022.
We asked our colleagues in the region this question:
What is the action or activity or impact that has been done under this project that you find the most amazing? Which story touched you?
These are their unedited answers:
Answer 1
An organisation which is located in Vinnytsia city and whose project was supported has organised and carried out interesting and engaging master classes for elderly people. The master classes were hosted in one of the organisation’s shelters where people with disabilities aged 70+, evacuated from Donets region, were living. To help them somehow get out of the stressful situation, it was offered to such elderly people to make wax candles. When a sufficient number of such hand-made candles accumulated, the elderly people asked that the candles be sent to Donetsk region to the people who were left without light and had to sit in the dark basements.
Answer 2
Romanians Karina* and her daughter, Anna*, are everywhere and in every situation to support refugees, whether it is accommodation, food, food, clothing, medicine, etc. We met them among refugees, shopping with refugees, at the pharmacy. When they run out of resources for them, they do everything humanly possible to cover them. Anna is the smallest volunteer involved in providing humanitarian support to Ukrainian refugees. She knows all the children, she plays with them regardless of age, she teaches them Romanian and learns Ukrainian from them, she knows which of the babies drink formula milk and that it must be from Aptamil, which of them have a new prescription from the doctor. She even told us seriously that she adopted a Ukrainian baby.
Answer 3
When I am talking about my current work to friends who earn as much as our total budget, I see in their eyes that they stop for a moment. They are thankful for their life. They know we use every penny well. They might be happy that others gave the donation. And some of them offered pro bono work.
Answer 4
I met a Roma mother who speaks Hungarian a little and has 2 disabled children. She escaped from the war all by herself, I do not know the details. She lived in a children’s hospital in Ukraine because of the health status of her children. She insisted to show them to me. She hold my hand and told me that she was afraid to leave our accommodation but she knew they needed a better-equipped health facility than ours. It was an ambivalent feeling letting her go due to lack of funds, lack of equipment, and lack of all sorts of things. She started again her journey in a different building, among different people, in a different town. That is stressful. At least she had the things we bought them. I had a Somalian refugee client in 2008. She had similar physic and gaze like this Ukrainian- Hungarian- Roma lady: “I can do it. I just need to say I am afraid.
Answer 5
A family reunifying, a shelter family from Harkiv contacted me in mid-July, that they are living in three different places since March. The father explained the situation, they are a family, the mom is 63 years old, she is in a wheelchair, the father is 29, he has a job at a factory of an international company, the wife, age 27, and the son 6. In cooperation with an international organization, we found a suitable apt for 30 days, where they moved in on the 6th of August, when they called me in the evening they were so happy and thankful so I suddenly forgot that I had covid theese days. Anyway, by the beginning of September, we found an apt for a long period, they moved in on the 6th of September, and I found a kindergarten for the kid, where he started on Monday, so the boy will be fluent in Hungarian in two months 🙂
Answer 6
We could and can combine our lobby work on accessible administration for Hungarian with the situation of Ukrainian people with reduced mobility. Thanks to the fund we can do more for legislation changes for Ukrainian people with disability despite the governmental cutbacks on our general budget. Legislation changes are what we do with good efficiency. Thanks to the funds we could and would enter into the gaps in relevant legislation and flag some cornerstones that need to be turned over.
Answer 7
I’ve taken care of one family that contacted us directly through our Facebook page since August. Parents were receiving different and sometimes even mutually exclusive rehabilitation suggestions for their 2-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. They were feeling completely lost and overwhelmed. Their leading orthopedic doctor was rushing them into surgery on the little girl’s legs, persuading them that was the only possible way for their daughter to first stand and then walk on her own. It was quite a long chain of discussions with different organizations that specialize in the cerebral palsy matters to finally get a wholesome picture on where and how we should start with the correct and truly beneficial support for the little girl. On September 14, the little girl was examined by the best (not exaggerating) orthopedic surgeon in Poland. She’s now under his care, and there’s a huge chance no surgery is ever needed. I do remember a call from the little girl’s mom yesterday – it was very emotional; even I was crying all our actions and long discussions with different specialists were these helpful. We’ve also exchanged our phone numbers so that we keep in touch after the project has ended.
Answer 8
There were more amazing things among these we have done so far. But the most awesome for us was this one: We had been driving goods to Uzhhorod for 2 months and every time we only had gone to the storage house (a daily centre for people with disabilities in Uzhhorod that has been serving as a centre for Ukrainians with disabilities fleeing from the war) situated in the suburbs of the city of Uzhhorod. In July we asked the director if the storage house was the place (the premises) that should be rebuilt and where people were supposed to spend their time before leaving Ukraine for Slovakia or other countries. All that we had seen until then, were gloomy rooms full of goods we had bought. The director burst into laughter and drove us to the centre itself in the city of Uzhhorod. We were really amazed when we came there. The premises of the centre were full of life, the clients bred animals (fish, parrots and a therapeutic dog) there, every employee was doing something meaningful with the clients. The residents showed us their rooms with the furniture we had bought, the women were in the kitchen preparing meals from the food that we had bought and babies were eating special food we had bought. It was really great to see that our work was important to them and that they were using everything they were given from us. We were driving home really impressed and full of new ideas of what else to buy for whom. From that time our purchases were much more personal and tailored to their specific needs. We even imagined concrete people we were buying something for.
Answer 9
As for the stories of people who we have met, the most touching for me was the story of a woman called Karina.*. She is a partially sighted person with gradual sight loss. She has been living, together with her 13 years old daughter, in a dormitory in Bratislava. The woman was very unhappy and disoriented in the beginning. We met her to interview her for our magazine for blind and partially sighted people. We wanted to know how the organization of the blind and partially sighted people in Ukraine works and what challenges people meet there. The interview wasn’t very successful, but the woman told us all her life story. Our colleague from Slovak Blind and Partially sighted Union some accompanied her during several medical examinations in a Slovak hospital and she was advised to undergo two operations (injections to her eyes). The financing of the operation was a problem for her as she is poor and was without any financial support at that time. We decided to finance the operations. At present she has been operated twice and her sight is much better now. She is being trained at the moment and going to start working in a chocolate factory in Bratislava. The interesting moment is that her support was the lowest amount of money we have given to a single person (about EUR 300). This small amount of money has helped her to completely change her life and become an independent person able to make her own living.!
*Identifying names have been changed for privacy reasons
Photo Credit: Stock – Iuliia Pilipeichenko