Relief Team adapts to unique needs of Ukrainian communities
While many regions in Ukraine were liberated in recent months, intense fighting continues across the east. Communities are suffering from daily artillery barrages, with homes and energy infrastructure being targeted.
Large-scale attacks have left innocent Ukrainian families in the dark. Regions where fighting has eased are still impacted by lack of heat, power, and water, in the middle of winter—including major cities like Kyiv. Throughout Ukraine, the WCK team is working hard to meet the pressing and unique needs of each community.
As winter set in, our teams established a network of new meal distribution hubs across the country. These centers offer people a space to warm up during these frigid months while recharging mobile devices, accessing the Internet, and eating a snack. Centers have served families fleeing the conflict as well as people without access to heat or forced to spend the night away from home due to curfews or shelling.
This project means hope, just like our other projects. I believe that they are not just about food, but about hope. About the fact that someone cares, that we are not alone.
Anastasia
Donetsk and its surroundings in eastern Ukraine remains one of the most dangerous regions in the country. To ensure we meet the food needs of hard-hit communities, our teams are distributing food kits and hot meals, including in the recently liberated cities of Lyman and Sviatohirsk. Despite Russia’s retreat from these areas, families in Sviatohirsk have no access to gas, and electricity is unreliable. In Lyman, communications infrastructure is being restored, but most people remain without heat. Despite these challenging conditions, families are returning home as they lack the resources to seek housing further away from the frontline.
Also in the east, cities near Kharkiv like Kupiansk, Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, and Kivsharivka continue to face near daily barrages. Russian forces are hitting civilian infrastructure, making power, gas, and water outages commonplace and roads difficult to navigate. The situation is especially dire for vulnerable people like seniors without the ability or means to evacuate. Our teams have been delivering 3,500 hot, nourishing meals each day to families in this region for several months. We have adapted to changing needs and are directing assistance towards multi-storey buildings where families have lost the capacity to cook for themselves.
WCK teams in southern Ukraine continue providing thousands of meal kits each week across Mykolaiv Oblast where persistent attacks have devastated vital infrastructure and stolen any sense of normalcy from innocent children. To bring some holiday cheer to the hard-hit region, we organized events to mark St. Nicholas Day in mid December. Hundreds of gifts were distributed to children in the region. Alongside Ukraine Railways we also provided gifts for a Christmas-themed train which reached families that had fled fighting in Kherson.
In Mykolaiv, our team met Svitlana who has lived in the region her whole life. At the outset of the war, Svitlana and her family made the choice to stay in their native town and help rebuild. They now live without power or gas and spend many nights on the floor trying to shelter from Russian attacks.
Lack of water has emerged as a unique challenge for people in recently liberated communities in Mykolaiv and Kherson, with many resorting to collecting water from the Dnipro River. To provide necessary support, we have partnered with a facility capable of producing 3,000 liters of potable water an hour and have set up distribution sites across the region.
Further south in Odesa, we continue working alongside restaurant partners to provide meals to people displaced from their homes in Kherson. To ensure these families receive nourishing meals as soon as possible, we have again partnered with Ukraine Railways to distribute more than 10,000 meals over the past month.
Early in the conflict, the western city of Lviv became a hub for families fleeing for their safety and served as a base for humanitarian efforts. While the city is now in a relative calm, lack of power persists. Hundreds of thousands of people that lost their homes in eastern or southern Ukraine now reside in Lviv. Our team continues providing 5,600 weekly meals to families with children, seniors, and other vulnerable people that remain in shelters or lack the ability to cook for themselves.
Our teams stand ready to adapt to the changing needs of families across the country and continue to be the first humanitarian workers to reach many of the recently liberated communities. You can help us continue serving meals by making a donation.
