Minibus for displaced children in Ukraine

This fundraiser has now finished! We reached our target and the bus is currently in Ukraine being used to help people. Thanks to everyone who supported us.

If you'd like to help with our new fundraiser, please go to: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-get-this-bus-to-ukraine

To donate to this cause from the USA, please use this page.

Our US total is currently $6,735!!

The money raised from this fundraiser will be sent to HealthRight International, founder organisation of the Ukrainian Foundation for Public Health.

There are about 40,000 Ukrainian children who have fled war in Ukraine currently living in the country's Western region of Lviv.

By February 2024, some will have been away from their homes for nearly two years. Some have no homes left to return to, as they have been destroyed or are in territory occupied by Russian forces. Many children have been separated from family members and friends.

In 2022 I met many children in these situations while working as a journalist in Ukraine, and saw the work charity Ukrainian Foundation for Public Health is doing to support them first-hand.

The charity supports every need, providing accommodation, access to education, food, clothes, health and mental health services, and importantly, ways to help children play and relax as children should.

In 2023 I helped coordinate the delivery of used laptop donations from people in the UK to children in Lviv, to help them do distance learning. Only about half of children in Ukraine are able to study in school, the rest are learning online. School days are frequently disrupted by air raids.

Now the charity has asked me if we can help with another very important piece of equipment: a minibus!

Ukrainian Foundation for Public Health is struggling to transport about 5,000 children in a car they have that keeps breaking down. They want a minibus to help move children and their families to accommodation, to take them on outings, to holiday camps or sporting opportunities. The bus will help children with special educational needs get to appointments. And the bus will also be able to transport vital humanitarian aid around the region, along with staff looking after the children, including psychologists.

The bus will help children like Ilonka, Kemal, Emir, Ilya, Nazar, Danylo and Vitalik, who are among ten children aged from ten to 17 years who were living in care in Lysychansk, Eastern Ukraine, when the war began. Some of them are orphans, while others were taken into care when their parents could no longer look after them.

They spent a month hiding in a basement when shelling in their region became very bad. Eventually in April 2022 their carers evacuated them to the Lviv region. They left everything behind. After they had left, their home was bombed and all their belongings destroyed or taken by occupying forces.

They currently live in Rava-Ruska city where the children are trying to settle into a new way of life, getting to know new people, growing vegetables in their garden, and attending creative workshops and other activities nearby.

The children with Ukrainian Foundation for Public Health staff

I am currently working alongside the UK's Community Transport Association, which has kindly put out an appeal to its members to donate a minibus. The hope is a company somewhere has a vehicle they no longer need. This effort is being supported by road passenger transport supplier Dawsongroup Bus and Coach and the Swindon Humanitarian Aid Partnership, both of whom already have experience sending such aid to Ukraine.

Hopefully we will be able to secure a used bus, and the money raised here will go towards any re-fit it needs, fuel to deliver it, and other associated costs or additional aid.

It's a high fundraising target, but I'm not working on this alone. In Long Island, New York USA, a high school student called Saanvi is also fundraising for the same cause. She got in touch with me after hearing me speak on a podcast about children in Ukraine. We have teamed up to try and raise the funds so the charity can buy this bus.

Saanvi's link can be found at the top of this page . We had to do it separately because I'm raising in GB pounds and she is collecting in US dollars. Please go to her page if you have found me from the US! We will combine our funds to reach our target and I'll be updating how we're doing together.

Any money you can donate will make a big difference, and the sooner we can reach the target, the sooner these children can experience a little more ease and stability in a life currently full of challenges and unknowns.

Thank you!

Gabriella and Saanvi

Main Picture Credit: Vitaliy Hrabar.

In order to be completely clear that this fundraiser is for the UFPH I have included a letter below, and a translation, to state our partnership. UFPH works alongside the Lviv Regional Center of Social Services in its role supporting internally displaced people.

TRANSLATION:

Dear colleagues!

May I take this opportunity to express my thanks for yours the desire to help families, children and the social sphere of Ukraine in a difficult time for us time of war.

Thanks to our partners, especially Gabriela Jozwiak for what she is exerts a lot of effort and makes a great contribution to helping families and children of Ukraine.

We inform you that in the sphere of coordination and control of Lviv Oblast of the military administration is the Lviv Regional Center of Social Services, which coordinates the activities of the Coordination Headquarters of the Lviv Regional Military

Administration for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), where regularly appeals are received from citizens who are forced due to active hostilities leave their place of residence and are looking for temporary shelter in the city of Lviv and Lviv region.

The regional center of social services has four departments

accept internally displaced persons, namely:

- department of the shelter for women with children victims of violence;

- department of mother and child center;

- department of the social dormitory;

- branch of the center of social and psychological assistance.

All branches are located in different territorial communities of Lviv Oblast, therefore, there is a need for a vehicle to implement current tasks related to the transportation of families with children from among domestic displaced persons to departments where they can temporarily live.

Therefore, taking into account the above, we ask you to consider the possibility providing a vehicle to the above institution for resolution social problems of families and children who arrived and are staying from the east of Ukraine.

Ready to cooperate with you and provide all the necessary information at part of our competence.

Contact persons: head of the Lviv Regional Center of Social Services Yaroslav Bordiyan

head of the department of methodical support of social work

Khrystyna Svita

How the money will be transferred to Ukraine:

From the UK it is not possible to set up a direct transfer from this website to the foundation's bank account in Ukraine. The funds collected here are going to a UK account in Gabriella Jozwiak's name, and then will go to Ukraine from there - every penny.

From the US site, funds are going directly to the UFPH's US charitable arm, and they are transferring the money over to Ukraine.

The UFPH can then use the money to purchase the bus, and any left over funds will go towards fuel, necessary bus adaptations or maintenance, transporting the bus to Ukraine, or towards aid for the families the foundation supports. There is no shortage of need and all the funds will be spent on charitable activities.