SUPA CARE for UKRAINE: Moving families into Spain!

SUPA CARE for UKRAINE – Helping Ukrainian families move from Poland to Spain!

 

Hi, I am Alex  Orsola, an impact evaluation specialist with more than 20 years of experience in international development and poverty reduction located in Barcelona. I am raising funds to help Ukrainian refugees, currently located at border cities in Poland, relocate to Spain. My brother Ferran Orsola  and I are supporting two families, caring for and hosting them indefinitely in our family house. They arrived in early March and are now fully integrated in the village. They are registered, working, schooling, resting and healing. It's been a wonderful experience to host them and a great honor to support them. But with your your support we can help many more families.

 

What is happening

 

Millions of refugees from Ukraine are crossing the border through Poland, but most Polish cities are at full capacity, with no more space to accommodate incoming families My dear friend David Walzer (CNN interview here) has been in Krakow for weeks, driving families from the train station to several airbnbs he has rented. Families stay with him for several days before embarking on the long journey to their next destination. Unless we help people move out from Poland, no more Ukrainian families will find refuge there. Spain is accepting Ukrainian nationals and non-Ukrainian citizens who lived there when the war started, offering them work permits and some social benefits. However, the journey is lengthy and complicated, as trains and other means of transportation are limited. NGOs working on-site are also at capacity, attending to the immediate needs of those who have crossed the border, and they have no means to help people move to other countries. We want to help out.

 

The initial plan  

 

The initial plan was to rent two buses in Barcelona, fill them up with donated clothing, food and medicines to be delivered to NGOs working in Krakow, and bring those buses back with women and children. We aimed to bring 100+ people to Barcelona and match them with host families. Moving people further from the border allows more groups leaving Ukraine to cross into Poland. We were conversing with Avant Grup, a coach renting company with available coaches and drivers to make the trip. Each bus could accommodate 54 passengers so our goal was to start with two buses, but with more money we could hire more coaches and safely bring to Spain more refugees . To cover the two coach rentals, food and water, and travel insurance for the 108 passengers' entire journey we budgeted approximately 36,000 EUR (USD 40,000). We were also open to provide plane tickets for those families who had passports, but many children do not, hence the coach option. Any money remaining was going to be donated to Save the Children Ukraine, which is doing an incredible job on site.

Update and the extended plan  

After lots of research and efforts we managed to partner with NGO Juntos Por La Vida, who have been working with Ukraine and hosting Ukrainian children in Spain over the summer for over two decades. Because of their hosting experience and their presence at the Polish border, we have been able to have a large demand of displaced families looking to relocate into Spain and a large supply of families to host them. But additionally, they have been able to hire the buses in Poland and even within Ukraine, reducing the overall costs to almost half of the initial budget.  Hence, we have already brought two full buses with a total of 97 people, mostly women and children, including little babies and pets. We have also flown a women with a severe health condition and her daughter into Barcelona, and have funds for a third bus. But we want to go further and also support displaced families within Ukraine that cannot or do not want to leave their country. We are now refurbishing an old hospital in Stryi to accommodate 250+ people. We need anything from fridges, washing machines, bunk beds, industrial pots and pans to food, toiletries and underwear. We are organizing several local campaigns for people and schools around us to donate small items, which will go back into the hospital with the coming bus, and we will use the remaining funds to purchase the larger items. 

What is our motivation

 

As soon as the war started we posted our house on icanhelp, an online platform to directly connect those willing to host and those seeking housing. Within hours we were contacted by two different women, Lena and Yana, asking us if we could host them and their respective families in our family home in Huesca, Spain. We said YES. Lena (20), her mother (49), her grandmother (80), her aunt (45), her little cousin (9) and her huge dog are currently on our family home. Yana (30), her little son (4) and her mother (54) made it to Germany but then decided to go back to the Czech Republic to be closer to home and their families within Ukraine. We have also hosted many other families we were passing by on their way to other cities, and helped many more with information and emotional support. We are ecstatic and feel  honored to be able to host and support these families. But many of you are far away and/or do not have the opportunity to help in that way, so we thought we could bring forces together and extend the help to many more families. With your support, we can do a lot more!

About me

I have been working on international development and poverty reduction for over two decades. I don't have direct professional experience working with refugees but I have lived in some of the poorest places in the planet and work with extremely vulnerable communities.  My work is focused on evaluating the impact of development projects and promoting scientific evaluation to increase the effectiveness of economic, social, and environmental interventions.  I design impact measurement frameworks, implement randomized control trials, build research and evaluation capacity, and develop knowledge products to institutionalize the generation and use of rigorous evidence within development banks, impact investors, universities, NGOs, and LMIC’s governments worldwide. I am currently the Research and Evaluation Specialist at Impacto and consult for BID Invest.  Other previous employers include the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, CEGA at University of California, Berkeley, and University of San Francisco, among others. For more info please visit my Linkedin page. 

Please share among your friends, family, and co-workers, so we can safely bring more families to their new temporary homes in Spain until this nightmare is over. Thanks ❤