Today the Kiev Help center for IDPs located at the Frolovskaya Street is the largest one in the capital. Every day about seventy families apply for help that is about two hundred people at the average, half of which come here for the first time. About twenty volunteers (approximately 60% of them are the internally displaced persons themselves) work at the center on a daily basis.
Products are accepted at the Help Center for IDPs.
There are people, who are here almost always. They are mainly internally displaced persons, who didn’t find any job, and mothers on maternity leave. There is also an unusual volunteer, almost a legend of the Center – the Spaniard Mario, who got married to a Ukrainian woman in his time and now helps here actively.
The coordinator of the Help center Elena Lebed says that people don’t get help here on a permanent basis, but have specific limitations to settle down.
“Our main task is to provide people not with fish, but with a fishing rod. The period when people can get food packages and household chemical goods at our center is very limited – it is only for 45 days since moving from the ATO zone. They have one and a half months to settle down, find a job and transfer pensions,” Elena says.
Elena Lebed
In the subsequent time we continue to provide aid in the form of bed sets and clothes.
According to Elena, the Center stopped to practice working with the places of compact residence of the IDPs, because such people don’t pay for accommodation, which means that they can provide themselves with necessities.
The Center infrastructure developed gradually as the need arose and now it is already quite impressive.
Today there is a medical aid station, hot cooking, a library, a children’s playground, a section of outerwear and footwear, a section of children’s clothes, a bedclothing and tableware section, a registration point and a psychological aid room.
The medical aid station doesn’t work on a regular basis. First of all, this is due to the volunteers, because, basically, medical university interns come to help here.
During the Center’s operation the library has grown considerably. The electronics specialist from Gorlovka Mikhail comes here every month. He takes to read the fiction, but sometimes can find something related to his occupation. He is very grateful for books.
On May 17, there were guests with a concert program at the Center: the Zvuchi dochi group that performed folk songs of all nations.
The volunteer of the outerwear section Lena told us that today the Center is provided in the same manner as usual. The Kiev volunteers bring the most of the aid, but also there is a lot of aid from abroad.
