Siren

Well here we are again in the shelter. We had a siren at 2.40am and spent an hour here after which we all struggled to get back to sleep. The day got better with a great meeting with a fantastic local organisation that wants to develop outreach to the villages outside the city. Many of the people evacuated from Kharkiv and Mariupol arrive with nothing and end up in empty houses without furniture or electricity. Part of the problem is that they have often lost their ID documents and without them can’t register for help so they provide one to one legal assistance.

Later we visited a volunteer run centre giving out donations from local people and businesses. It’s great to see so many volunteers and so much energy but their site is a mess, piles of unwanted goods they don’t have space to store, not enough of the things people actually do need, the site is dangerous and a fire risk with no proper exit and children running round while piles of boxes teeter perilously above them. They need a proper warehouse and supply chain and they know it but don’t know how to set it up. The question is whether we help them do that or - given we are such a small team - is it better if we focus our energies elsewhere?