Crisis in Ukraine: Families need your help

Thanks to an unprecedented outpouring of support from donors like you, our Humanitarian Action team rapidly began working with partners to help suffering people in Poland and in Ukraine. Your generosity helped us deploy experts to support our relief operations, including a program manager, a health advisor, and an advisor to lead our efforts to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse in Ukraine and for Ukrainian refugees.

Our response in Ukraine includes:

• Medical supplies and equipment. We’re sending urgently-needed supplies to two hospitals in Ukraine — one in Kyiv and one in Chernihiv. The shipment, which includes surgical and wound care kits, gauze, IV kits, oxygen masks, defibrillators and stretchers, will help health workers care for 7,500 patients.

• Partnerships with networks throughout Ukraine to provide shelter. In six centers sheltering families who fled bombs, we’re subsidizing the cost of emergency housing for more than 15,000 people. Your gifts are also providing these families with food and essential supplies like folding beds, pillows, heaters, laundry detergent, and personal hygiene items. We’ll channel the quilts and kits that you lovingly made to reach our neighbors in these centers.

• Identifying key gaps in health services and potentially expanding to support mental health services and the treatment of communicable diseases. 

Our response in Poland continues with:

• Emergency cash for Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Ukrainians who fled to Poland need different things, from baby formula and medicine to transportation or clothes. To give families the flexible funds they need to buy urgent items, we’ve committed $2 million to a combined program with Lutheran World Federation (LWF). At sites set up at Lutheran churches in Poland, refugees register so they can withdraw emergency cash from Polish ATMs.

• Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. After fleeing their homes, some Ukrainians find themselves in situations where opportunists take advantage of their vulnerability. With your help, we’re supporting refugee women and children who come to Lutheran church sites to receive emergency cash grants. At the sites, trained workers will direct women to support services if they have faced sexual exploitation and abuse – and provide practical information telling women how to avoid situations where they could come to harm.

• Supporting the Evangelical-Augsburg Church of St. Martin in Krakow, Poland, which established a hostel for Ukrainian women and children. We have provided essential supplies including milk, energy biscuits, personal hygiene products and more.

• Shipping and distributing LWR Quilts and Kits. The personal care kits, baby kits, and quilts that you’ve made with your own hands will reach our Ukrainian neighbors in need.

Download and print our latest Emergency Situation Report: https://lwr.org/downloads/lwr-situation-report-crisis-ukraine-no-6

The situation in Ukraine and Eastern Europe is evolving every day. We will keep you updated as our response develops.