On February 24, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by land, air and sea, the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War II. As of March 30, 12M people are in need and around 10.5M people (more than a quarter of the Ukrainian population) have been forcibly displaced, according to data from OCHA Ukraine.
In this context and with the support of YMCA Europe and other reliable partners, YMCA Ukraine effectively responded to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and immediately launched the Humanitarian Relief Hub in Lviv (hereinafter HRH). The hub was founded and embodies the efforts of different local YMCA members around all Ukraine.
After a short preparation activity, the starting point for HRH was March 7, 2022. All activities were implemented during the high intensive period of war when almost all territory of Ukraine suffered from heavy fighting and/or or intensive shelling:
- A coordination team and volunteer community were formed.
- An online tool was created to track storage supplies and manage a database.
- A fully functional storage facility 150 m2 in the area was organized.
- 1.5t mini bus was purchased for transportation needs.
- 7.7t of humanitarian aid was processed in a storage facility within a month.
- Approx 7t of aid received from YMCA Berlin including food, hygiene items, batteries, torches, diapers, kids nutrition, etc and additionally ~0.7t of supplies (mainly food) was received from private donors from Poland.
- Parcels were sent to 15 destinations around Ukraine including 9 local YMCAs.
- More than 1000 people bene?ted from the provided aid.
- A family of 4 people and a dog were evacuated from the high-risk area.
- Extra 19-20t of humanitarian aid is expected to be delivered from Spain and YMCA Scotland within the next few days.
HRH team structure:
- Coordination – Vitalii Bokhniak
- Logistics and transportation – Dmytro Dudchenko
- Partnerships – Marta Huretska
- Volunteers team – Sofia Burtak
- Storage facility – Vadym Bokhniak
HRH is addressing the following tasks:
- Aggregation and processing of information about the needs of local organizations;
- Development of the cooperation with partners;
- Logistics coordination;
- Receiving of the cargo and sorting of items onsite;
- Formation of the parcels;
- Shipment and/or delivering of the parcels.
List of destinations reached by YMCA humanitarian initiative:
- Kyiv
- Community of Pohreby village (Kyiv region)
- Community of Ukrainka village (Kyiv region)
- Community of Bilohorodka village (Kyiv region)
- Boiarka, local YMCA (Kyiv region)
- Community of Sharhorod (Vinnytsia region)
- Poltava, local YMCA
- Zdolbuniv, local YMCA
- Odessa, local YMCA
- Zaporizhia, local YMCA
- Kropyvnytskyi, two local YMCAs
- Kremenchuk, local YMCA
- Lutsk, local YMCA
- Chernihiv
- Community of Puhivka village (Chernihiv region)
Key challenges and needs:
- Increasing the humanitarian aid scale demands a bigger volume of the storage facility. Lviv is a convenient place for further development of the storage facility as it has good infrastructure for logistics and transportation as well as it is close to the Polish-Ukrainian border. However certain costs should be forecasted to have a possibility to expand Hub storage potential. A huge demand for the storage facilities in Lviv should be also taken into consideration.
- Storage effciency could be increased by technical means: such as thermal printer, infrared scanner, small hand pallet stacker truck. These tools would help to proceed storage items faster and more precisely.
YMCAs are caring for refugees fleeing violence in Ukraine by providing shelter, aid items, medical supplies. We need your support. Thank you!
