![]() Wojtek Wilk, the head of the Polish Center for International Aid, says the Ukraine crisis is one of them. Globally, humanitarian groups are coming to recognize that cash aid makes a lot of sense in some disasters. In Poland, several separate pilot programs have started offering cash directly to refugees. They hope to start disbursements in the coming days. UNHCR and other aid groups, including the International Organization for Migration and Mercy Corps, are starting to enroll people in this cash distribution program. Billing says in a war zone, it's much easier to transfer cash than to move truckloads of food, diapers and clothes. The programs in those countries disburse the money on ATM cards instead of over-the-counter as at the post office. UNHCR is involved in similar programs that are being launched to distribute the funds to refugees in Poland and Moldova. The assistance will be available for at least the next three months. This is not even enough money to lift someone above the poverty line or to rent an apartment in most parts of Ukraine, but aid groups say it will help tide people over temporarily. Families will be able to get 2,220 Ukrainian hryvnia, or roughly $75, per person per month at any branch of the post office regardless of where they find themselves in the country. The program will start by distributing funds through the Ukrainian postal service. The United Nations estimates that nearly 6.5 million Ukrainians - out of a population of 43.7 million - are internally displaced. "UNHCR is planning to disburse unconditional cash grants to at least 360,000 internally displaced persons," Billing says. refugee agency and a coalition of aid groups are ramping up a program to instead give cash directly to displaced Ukrainians. After sorting them, she says, the center is able to provide staple food baskets and clothes to roughly 500 families per day.īut such physical donations can be cumbersome and time-intensive to deliver, says the Ukraine representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Karolina Lindholm Billing. Junk aside, Kostorna is grateful for the many donations she says are useful. ![]() "Respect the people who lost everything." "I understand you want to help, but you have to respect us," Kostorna says. Some of the donations are junk, she says, that volunteers must throw away or send to a dog shelter to be used as bedding. The coordinator of the aid distribution center, Tetyana Kostorna, says many people have been incredibly generous to Ukraine, but other people are just getting rid of their worn-out clothes. ![]() She also says they get very little that they can forward to soldiers on the front lines. Joking that Ukraine has become the secondhand clothing bazaar for all of Europe, Stefanovich says they receive lots of children's clothes but not enough shoes and sneakers for adults. "This is all clothes for children ages zero to 1," she says, pointing to one of the various mounds of donations.īut there is an imbalance in what's arriving at the bazaar and exactly what's needed. Nastia Stefanovich, a volunteer at the distribution center, stands in front of a pile of white grain bags reaching to the ceiling. It's not that the clothing donations have no role in such aid efforts.
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