• Last week, Eero Janson, the head of the Estonian Refugee Council, visited Zaporizhzhia oblast in eastern Ukraine and the areas previously occupied in Kyiv oblast.
• We signed a cooperation agreement with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) for a total amount of USD 5 million, which we will direct to cash-based assistance within Ukraine

Meeting with the Acting Mayor of Žaporižjaya.

Humanitarian aid in Ukraine

In Ukraine, we are implementing multi-purpose cash assistance, supporting hospitals in Eastern Ukraine with medical supplies, food, generators and other necessities, and distributing blankets and other essentials to people in bomb shelters.

As of May 1, we have supported 22 265 households (ca. 67 000 people). In total, we have mediated aroud 9,8 million euros cash,based support (Estonian donors + WFP + OCHA). The support allowance is 2220 UAH (= about 70 EUR) per household member. The needs of each household are assessed individually, the beneficiaries are mainly families who have lost their home or family member or whose family member has been wounded in hostilities or who live in so-called isolated cities. The main areas of our humanitarian intervention are currently Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kiev, Sumy, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv and Kherson​ oblasts. At the moment, we are able to support an average of 1,400-1,600 households a day in the direction of humanitarian aid, and we are working to increase capacity and speed on the ground. Our on-site team in Ukraine has 30 members who on a daily basis assess those in need, provide them with cash-based assistance and monitor the situation.

According to the United Nations, multi-purpose cash assistance continues to be the best way to help people, except in some regions where markets are no longer functioning. You can read more about why at the moment it is most sensible to support financially here: Eero Janson: People in Ukraine need money, not things.

In addition to the money of Estonian donors, we implement multi-purpose cash assistance with the support of other donors:

• In the beginning of April, we signed a cooperation agreement with the World Food Programme (WFP) to support 60 500 people in the Kiev, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv oblasts with multi-purpose cash assistance. Under the WFP cooperation agreement, we will distribute within three months 12.5 million euros to those in need. Read more in the press release.
• From April 17, we extended our multi-purpose cash assistance with the funding from the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund managed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). With this project, we will within three months provide cash-based assistance in total to 12 000 people in the Zaporizhia and Donetsk oblasts.
• From May 1, we started with multi-purpose cash assistance with the funding of  International Rescue Committee (IRC). With this project, 21 000 people in Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kiev, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions will receive 3-month cash support. 

In Ukraine, we are part of the Joint Market Monitoring Initiative (JMMI), under which we help the humanitarian sector maintain a consistent overview of how and where in Ukraine markets are operating, whether and how fast basic necessities prices are rising, and so on. Our area of responsibility is the Zaporizhia oblast, more specifically the city of Zaporizhia and the settlements of Vilniansk, Bilenke, Kushugum and Shyroke.

We also deliver medical supplies, food and other necessities (e.g. generators) to hospitals, so far several hospitals in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhia and Chernihiv oblasts have received support. Exceptionally, we have also in cooperation with a Ukrainian transport company sent humanitarian aid to Mykolaiv, one of the most critical areas. We have also delivered 900 blankets and other essentials to bomb shelters in the cities of Zaporizhia and Kharkiv. This week, we will receive and distribute 4600 sleeping bags in accommodations for internally displaced persons in Zaporizhia.

We coordinate all our activities with other humanitarian organizations through the United Nations OCHA cluster system. Estonian Refugee Council was the first humanitarian organization that started multi-purpose cash assistance at the very beginning of the war.

Supporting war refugees in Estonia

The Estonian Refugee Council’s counselling center in Tallinn (Liivalaia 28) continues to counsel both refugees and their loved ones every workday. An information hotline is open for Ukrainian refugees and people helping them: +372 5881 1311 (every day from 10 am to 5 pm); also e-mail: dopomoha@pagulasabi.ee.

The Refugee Council’s database has accumulated more than 3000 accommodation offers from private individuals and companies, as well as hundreds of other cooperation offers. Of these, approximately 900 are offers of private residences (separate apartment or house), the rest of the offers are shared living spaces (apartment or room shared with the owner). Of all the offers, we have already mediated 846 to households from Ukraine. We have also proactively mediated accommodation offers through the Refugee Council to local governments, who contact accommodation providers directly as needed. 

In Tallinn, Pärnu and Tartu are already working teams of Refugee Council volunteers, who mediate accommodation offers in state accommodation establishments so that refugees can get more permanent accommodation faster. In cooperation with the Social Insurance Board and Kinnisvara24, a special real estate portal for Ukrainian war refugees has been completed.We asked all not yet used accommodation providers to enter their ads in this portal. From the new portal, Ukrainians can also by themselves search for a suitable place to live, and local governments and our consultants can mediate offers. This will speed up the mediation of accommodations, as our volunteers will continue to mediate accommodations from both our database and the real estate portal. Read more about the Estonian Refugee Council’s activities regarding accommodation.

In addition, we have started various group counselling’s for Ukrainians all over Estonia in order to offer Ukrainian war refugees the opportunity to receive high-quality information, share and analyse their experience so far, and get answers to questions that have remained confusing so far. We plan counselling on four different topics: adaptation, field of work, digital skills and supporting a child's adaptation. We’ll involve various partners to conduct group counselling. The first workshops have already taken place. More detailed information on activities and schedules can be found on the Estonian Refugee Aid website, we will update the information on the website on an ongoing basis.

The first two support groups led by psychotherapists have started working in Tallinn in cooperation with MTÜ Eluliin. To register for the group, call the Tallinn Psychological Crisis Center on 631 4300 (Mon-Fri 9-19, Sat 10-15). In cooperation with Eluliin, we also prepare for specialists to conduct NET therapy training in Russian.

From in me middle of April, we started paying school support to every Ukrainian child who has received temporary protection and goes to school, currently 954 applications have been received and support has been paid to 449 applications and 565 children, in total of 28 250 euros. The remaining applications are under data review and verification is underway.

Donations and use of donations

The biggest support at the moment is from financial donations. All our crisis activities continue to run on donations. With the help of donations, we provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine and support Ukrainians arriving in Estonia. Donations can be made in the following ways:

• By bank transfer: a transfer of a suitable size can be made to the donation account of MTÜ Eesti Pagulasabi in SEB bank: EE791010220258852223
• Via bank links: SEB, Swedbank, LHV and Paypal bank links can be found on the donation page and For Ukraine campaign page
• Through donation telephones: Tele2, Telia and Elisa customers can donate via donation telephones: 9003801 (5 EUR), 9003802 (10 EUR), 9003803 (50 EUR)

Around 5 million euros has accumulated in donations for the Refugee Council, including targeted donations made for organizing evacuations and donations for activities in Estonia. Of this, 2,1 million euros has already been spent on giving humanitarian aid in Ukraine and 555 000 euros on evacuations. Read the statistics and an overview of how we organized evacuations for over a month here. We have paid out school supports in the total amount of 28 250 euros.

We make transfers to our Ukrainian bank account in instalments (500 000 euros each), to minimize financial risks. We constantly keep at least a week’s expenses worth of prepayment and a crisis reserve in our Ukrainian bank account (e.g. if the situation changes so that our local coworkers have to evacuate Zaporizhia). Estonian Refugee Council’s administrative costs are about 3000 euros per month (office rent, utilities, telephones, internet, etc.). These costs are covered by various projects, we don’t cover them with donations.

All our financial reports are audited annually, the reports of previous years are publicly available here: https://www.pagulasabi.ee/en/documents. If you want more detailed information, please send an inquiry to info@pagulasabi.ee.

***

Estonian Refugee Council is a non-profit association founded in 2000 and operating in the public interest, with the aim of standing up for the rights and well-being of refugees in Estonia and abroad. Estonian Refugee Council is a humanitarian aid organization certified by the European Union. In Eastern Ukraine, Refugee Council has been providing humanitarian aid since 2014.

Photo: Orin Louis Jones, Kiev