FORUM-SPES brings together the whole Caritas-Spes Ukraine team
On July 15, 2022, it has been three months since Caritas-Spes Ukraine Religious Mission joined the second Emergency Appeal Project "Response to emergency situations and consequences of hostilities in Ukraine". A large all-Ukrainian team gathered online to get to know each other, listen to reports, feel the scale of their work, and most importantly, see and support each other even through small Zoom windows.
The team was congratulated and inspired by Fr. Petro Zharkovskyi, President of Caritas-Spes Ukraine, Fr. Viacheslav Hrynevych, executive director of our Mission and Olena Shevchuk, project manager. The fathers blessed all 64 participants of the Forum, wished them good luck in their endeavor and conveyed the admiration of foreign partners for our resilience.
Olena shared her personal story of the first day of the war. On February 24, the bus carrying employees from the kick-off meeting in Odesa turned into a communication platform. The project manager told how Emergency Appeal was transformed from setting up centers for IDPs to large humanitarian hubs, now covering 23 regions of Ukraine.
"Since mid-April, we have managed to fulfill the goals of creating 34 Caritas-Space Ukraine centers, hosting IDPs families, launching a hotline and organizing humanitarian aid from EU countries. Our next steps will be to increase the amount of humanitarian aid provided, refurbish the centers and organize psychological support for people living there," Olena said.
"FORUM-SPES" was moderated by Iryna Polietukha, centers coordinator. An important topic raised at the Forum was humanitarian logistics. Vitalii Pazdrii, national coordinator for logistics and Iryna Nehreieva, national coordinator for monitoring, talked about the routes and calculation of charity.
Vitalii presented the idea of how logistics acts as a tool for unity, outlined problem areas within the field and solutions for cooperation. According to him, it was possible to achieve mutual control and coordination of actions of all participants thanks to uniform rules and mutual support. Our team involved business approaches and experienced outsiders, willing to donate their time, as well as led communication in a highly diplomatic and sensitive manner. Today, we deliver humanitarian aid to 23 regions of Ukraine and have significantly expanded our direction to the East over the past month. In more than four months of the war, 558,127 people have received assistance, which means more than 1,700,000 social services have been provided.
Iryna Nehreieva presented statistical data based on the results of the work of Caritas-Spes Ukraine centers from May to July 2022 and emphasized that the number of hot lunches given out to people in need hit the top among the services delivered by our Mission. The number of people who received food kits during this period amounts to 300,000. Iryna also noted the trend that many people from Caritas-Spes Ukraine centers for IDPs have already returned home, but more than 1,000 people still reside there.
Having learnt the important statistics of the All-Ukrainian team's work in various centers, Vira Usyk, the project facilitator, conducted an interactive game "Energizer-Icebreaker" for all participants. Since the project "Response to emergency situations and consequences of hostilities in Ukraine" attracted new employees to the National Office Team and there are new volunteers in the centers, everyone learned various facts about the work of our Mission. This game was a good opportunity to learn interesting information about the work of the Mission and recall important facts from the life of the team.
Afterwards, expert facilitators and participants of the Forum (Liudmyla Kindrat, Vitalii Pazdrii, Vira Usyk, Inna Kaniuka, Olena Shevchuk, Hanna Skitiova and Serhii Zamidra) conducted a group activity according to the World Café methodology on a pro bono basis. All participants were divided into virtual rooms where they could brainstorm about improving the Mission's humanitarian work. They discussed, in particular, how logistical connections between cities can strengthen contacts between people, shared challenges and joyful moments during the project implementation period, as well as their anti-stress practices and ideas on how to organize systematic work with volunteers. The issues of internal and external communication were separately touched upon, as well as changes in the project and ideas on how to help even more effectively.
The final module consisted of short speeches in the TEDx format, where members of our team shared their life-changing stories and gave practical advice on participating in the project. Oksana Ukraiinska, an employee of Caritas-Spes Odessa, shared her experience of creating effective chatbots, which made the procedure of accepting requests for humanitarian aid much faster. Serhii Horkusha from the local Caritas-Spes team in Dnipro told how their volunteers managed to become a powerful center and cover the needs of more than 25,000 people within a week. Taras Ratushniak, an employee of our Mission in Kharkiv, recalled how the Caritas-Spes Kharkiv team, despite the shelling and danger, managed to organize systemic delivery of humanitarian aid and trips to remote districts of the city. Tetiana Kalinichenko, communications manager at the National Office of Caritas-Spes Ukraine, revealed the meaning of communication in war conditions and reminded of the importance of seeing those whom we serve.
The Forum's outcome was summarized based on an interactive reflection. The participants shared their impressions of the event, and a cloud of tags was created out of their feedback, which we are happy to share.
The Mission thanks all the employees and volunteers who prove every day that our work makes a lot of sense and our power is in standing together.
