Yotam Polizer
Ukraine and IsraAID: A Developing Crisis
Yotam Polizer and Hagit Krakov Cherni - IsraAID and Ukraine: A Developing Crisis
- Welcome back everybody for our second session today. We are very privileged to have Yotam Polizer who you’ve all met before, and Hagit Krakov Cherni, and of course Carly with us today who will be discussing IsraAID and Ukraine: A developing crisis. So before I hand over to them, I just want to give a quick bio so that you know them. Hagit Krakov Cherni is IsraAID emergency head of mission responding to the Ukraine refugee crisis in Moldova. In the past six years, she has led IsraAID emergency and long-term measures in Vanuatu, Greece, Fiji, and Italy. And most recently was a regional programme director covering nine countries at IsraAID headquarters. She now lives in London with her husband and two children. Thank you Hagit, and welcome. And Yotam. Yotam Polizer is the global CEO of IsraAID, overseeing IsraAID’s global operations, strategy and partnerships. Following the summer 2021 crisis in Afghanistan, Yotam coordinated the rescue of 167 Afghans from the hands of the Taliban. Following the September, 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, he led IsraAID’s humanitarian mission in Lesbos Greece to support Syrian refugees on the island and also establish IsraAID Germany, which provides long-term support for Yazidi and Syrian refugees in Germany. Over the course of 10 years at IsraAID Yotam has also built and programmes in Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In the Philippines after typhoon Haiyan. In Sierra Leone during the 2014 Ebola crisis, and in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake. So Yotam it wasn’t long ago that we had the pleasure of having you on “Lockdown University” discussing that Afghan crisis and the role that you played there together with our team as well. And so I am now, thank you very, very much for joining us again. And so to both of you, very warm welcome and now I’m going to hand over to you, thank you.
Thank you very much Wendy. So it’s great to be back with the IsraAID team again. Yotam is dealing with his own small humanitarian crisis in the form of his two year old twins. So we will jump to Hagit if a rebellion takes place. But Yotam, before we jump into the Ukraine, it’s been a busy few months for IsraAID as Wendy just touched on, you know, three, four months ago you were dealing with a completely unexpected mission in Afghanistan. You’ve been navigating floods, earthquakes. How do you decide which crisis to respond to and how do you work out which resources to assign given all of these situations that could demand your attention and all of them staying in the news all the time. Yotam let me know if you can hear me.
Yes, I’m here, I’m here so sorry.
No problem.
I’m dealing with another small crisis here at home.
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.
No, I was always half joking that dealing with Ukrainian refugees or African refugees is much easier than dealing with twins here at home, but now they’re in the loving hands of their mother, so it’s all good.
So Yotam I was just asking about how you decide which of the latest crises to respond to given, you know, Afghanistan was obviously not something you saw coming and expected to get involved with, and now just a few months after, I know your team was stretched incredibly thin, you find yourselves on the ground in the Ukraine and on the borders. How do you decide which crisis to respond to and how do you make sure you have those resources?
Yeah, I mean it’s a combination of factors. It’s first and foremost the scale of the crisis. And the Afghan refugee which I shared on our previous session was not an obvious one for us to get involved. Not because it wasn’t a large scale disaster first, it was because we didn’t have good partners on the ground. We didn’t, you know, as Israelis we were not allowed to go into Afghanistan, we don’t have diplomatic relation with Afghanistan. So there were a lot of security related issues before we got involved. In the Ukraine crisis, the scale of this crisis was just enormous and just to give some perspective, we finished now a six years operation with Syrian refugees. In Syria, the influx of refugees was also in the millions, but it took years. We’ve seen in Ukraine, 3.5 million refugees fleeing the country in a month. That what happened in Syria over five or six years. So really the scale of the crisis was, you know, basically forced us to react as humanitarian aid organisation. So I would say that’s the first factor. But other factors that are crucial for us are, first of all, do we have local partners? We know that in each of these crisis, we can’t really just do the work ourselves. And in the case of Ukraine, the one of the reason we decided to act in Moldova was because we received a direct request for support from the Moldovan government, and very quickly Hagit and the team on the ground, which you’ll hear all about, was able to build very strong partnerships with both Moldovan NGOs, the Moldovan government, international organisation, and some of the Ukrainian leaders who were crossing the border as refugees and actually joined our team. So partnership is the second thing. And the third factor is obviously about funding in a world where resources are very limited, I would say that unfortunately some of the crisis, the humanitarian crisis around the world, many of them are in sub-Saharan Africa, but not only, are receiving less attention, and when there’s little attention to the crisis, it doesn’t mean that there’s no humanitarian need, it’s the opposite, but unfortunately it’s much harder for us to raise money. So we need funds to be able to operate. Thankfully in the case of Ukraine, well, not thankfully, the crisis is terrible, but thankfully the attention brought a lot of support that enabled us to operate. We want to make sure that we have sufficient resources, not only to respond immediately, but also stay long-term because we know the needs are long-term and we’ll discuss it later.
So today is the one month anniversary of the Russian invasion. I know that for those of you on the ground, it’s felt like at least a year and I only joined you for 48 hours of it, but if you’d have told me I’d been there for two weeks, at the end of those 48 hours I’d have believed you. Walk us through what the first few days of the war looked like. You were on the ground 72 hours after the invasion, you were one of the first international NGOs to arrive. What did that look like for IsraAID and why did you choose Moldova as your first entry point?
So we chose Moldova for several reasons. One, is because of the request from the government. Two, it’s really the poorest country in the region and one of the poorest country in Europe and it’s not part of the EU. So we knew that the resources there will be very limited. Three, it’s very close to big cities like Odessa and many of the cities that are now bombed in the south end part of Ukraine, the closest western border is Moldova. So we knew there will be a big influx there with very limited local resources. We also saw in the very beginning that a lot of the other organisations were going to Poland that received a larger number of refugees. So we wanted to fill in the humanitarian gap. The first few days I think was very confusing because no one knew where it’s really going. We’ve seen the first wave of refugees and Hagit can talk about it, she actually saw it firsthand, was really people who had resources, people who crossed with cars, people who were just passing through to their relatives in western Europe, in Germany, and in other places. So we really didn’t know what the scale of this crisis would look like, but it was very clear that there will be needs and that we were really one of the very few international organisations on the ground. So very quickly we set up a tent in the border, on the border crossing in Palanca and started to distribute primarily relief supplies and winter items. It was freezing, freezing cold. And the other thing that I think was very, very clear from the beginning was the needs of the mothers and the children. And that’s something, again, I’ve been doing this for 14 years, but I think that’s one of the things that make this crisis so different. The level of vulnerability of the Ukrainians that are crossing is much higher because the families are actually separated for the most part. So it’s mothers, children, many newborns. So I think that was very clear from the beginning and that we had to find and build solutions, and both immediate support and long-term support for these mothers and their children which is really became our focus.
So Hagit, you arrived on day five. I’m going to share a few photos during our chat that I took on the ground just to give people a bit of an understanding of what it looked like. But you know, you are no stranger to these situations. Wendy shared your bio. You know, you over the last six years have entered many natural and manmade disasters. How did it compare to previous situations and what were the things that struck you most in the first few days?
So I think I’ll divide it into three and maybe to continue what Yotam was speaking about, the massive amount of vulnerable population that we were meeting of women and children, just to kind of get ahold of the numbers, 47% of the population coming into Moldova were kids. It was such an immense number that we got the statistics from the EU saying that today one in every eight children in Moldova is a Ukraine refugee. So the amount of children that you’ve seen, it was just, you know, very, very concerning. And you’ve realised that this is not a temporary influx, this is a systematic one. So the needs were changing all the time. I think the second thing I would mention is the amount of time that it took, I think about a week for the large international organisations to come in and kind of put their feet in the door, it took a while. Usually when you arrive at these situations, you meet right away the international organisations, the UN organisations, and it took them time, obviously due to the distress and rise of countries that needed immediate support like Poland, for example, so it took time to arrive into Moldova. I think the third thing that I would mention is the high motivation. This is the first time I’ve been in a manmade disaster that the motivation of the hosting community and the surrounding was so, so high and so welcoming and with a really true, genuine desire to try and support and provide as much assistance to this community as possible. And maybe the fourth and last thing that I would mention that for me was unusual in this kind of setting were the animals. The amount of animals that we’ve seen coming in with the population was really large. There was one man that we were sitting and talking to and we asked him what does he have in his bag? And you know, each person could bring only one bag, one suitcase with them when fleeing so quickly and he opened up his bag and took out a box with a hamster inside. And you know, it just kind of raises these questions and like, what are the things that you take when you have to flee your house as soon as possible? So yeah, I think those are the four major points that kind of struck when we first arrived.
And what I was struck by and you know, that was a kind of 10 days into the crisis, you know, was was the, as you say, the complete disruption in one second of people’s lives and you know, that they were kind of minding their own business prior. You know, a girl told me a story of having just bought her house in Kiev, you know, for the first time, which no longer exists. And it had then taken her kind of the week to get to the border with Moldova. She worked for an advertising company that basically didn’t exist anymore and you know, she wasn’t in the space of an hour, had lost, you know, her job, her home and everything, and she was probably 24, 25. She spoke good English and hoped that kind of as she had a plan as many that I met to go to Germany, you know, and hope that that was where they could settle. Maybe you could share with the group one of the stories that stuck with you from that week.
So there were so many stories, but maybe the first one that comes up from just the example that you gave is we were working constantly in the tent on the border, it was a safe space for women and children, and elderly community to come in and have shelter from the cold, be able to change a nappy for their child for the first time after some of them travelling for seven days, some of them walking for 10 kilometres, and also we had our experts there who were providing just psychosocial support for people who mentally and physically were in a very unstable situation. And in the tent there were many conversations, a lot of insecurity, and at some point someone on my team said something about the refugee community moving what we need to do, and Chișinău now there was a lot of, you know, issues to settle while we’re working. And then one of the refugee women, she looked at me and she spoke English so she understood what he said and she said to him, she said to me, “Is he talking about us?” And I smiled and I said, “Yes.” And she said, “So I’m a refugee now, huh? "So this is it, I’m a refugee.” And I think that kind of stuck to me because, you know, we’re used to listening to media and talking about these community of people as the refugee crisis, the refugee community, and up until a day ago, they weren’t refugees at all. They went to work, they had their schools, they had their environment, they had their houses, like you said. And I think that kind of changed in concept on a very kind of mental level is very difficult to comprehend.
And in terms of the biggest issues that you faced when you first arrived, you mentioned you were one of the first NGOs there. I know that the Moldovan government struggled initially with the influx crossing at the border and had to move the receiving point sort of three kilometres back to manage the flow. What were some of those kind of logistical political safety problems that you and your staff encountered? Obviously we’ll come to talk about some of the issues the refugees were facing, but in those first few days of operating, what are some of the struggles you have to navigate?
So I think like in every crisis, the ongoing needs are changing all the time. So you need a very kind of agile point of view on how to react differently every day according to the needs on the ground. Understanding the politics in the country is crucial. So while you’re providing support and running, you have to kind of really try and grasp and understand the situation within within the hosting community and the politics there had a lot of influence. So whether you worked with the municipality that represented a specific party within the country or whether you worked with the Ministry of Labour and social protection, which represented a different party. So the approaches had to change all the time. Logistically it took time for the country, a few days, but a few crucial days and coordinating all the logistics of how to bring all the equipment into the country, how to make sure that it arrives in time to the different destinations. And I think the safety issue was an ongoing issue that we were facing, but the safety issue of protection and how do you protect such a vulnerable population that you know, besides women and children, you also saw a lot of the minority groups that are arriving with men as well and everyone is kind of, you know, being supported by a similar solution of tents, of shelters, and how do you really kind of accompany and support, and strengthen the services on the go in terms of this community and their needs.
So Yotam, when IsraAID arrived and they are faced with this corridor of refugees and some of the photos I’ve shared, what tools do you bring and what is the most important thing for IsraAID to be providing?
Yeah, I mean you’re sharing here a picture of, you know, one of the stories that at least stuck with me when we were there together of this 92 year old woman who were crossing and for me it was mind blowing, or I really couldn’t believe that a 92 year old woman went on this crazy journey in this cold. You know, she was asking her daughter who was there with her asked if we can fix the heater to warm her, and we brought her some tea but really to me, it really hit me that if a 92 year old woman is going on this crazy journey, the issue of safety and what she’s feeling facing back home is you know, hard to grasp, hard to digest. But the expertise that we have in these situations, I think is of, we have four main sectors of expertise that we are usually using as tools to help these communities during crisis. And I’d focus on, I would say two main sectors that we’re usually using that we feel are neglected, that we feel that not enough organisations and there isn’t enough support system on these levels. The first one is everything related to mental health and psychological support. Like, you touched on this a little bit. But this is unfortunately not something a lot of organisations, and donors, and volunteers are thinking of, right? You usually think about shelter, food, water, rightfully so. But the mental health piece we believe is as crucial and this is an area of focus for us and we’re bringing a lot of different expertise from Israel, which is a country unfortunately that’s also suffering from trauma. So we’re really using a lot of innovative tools around mental health, not just, you know, western type of counselling. We’re using a lot of arts and games, and play therapy, and stress release activities. And so in this crisis we very quickly set up these child friendly spaces, which are centres for children to just play and release their stress and use arts and different tools to cope with the trauma and the anxiety. And we also train local Moldova volunteers and social workers in these tools so they could provide long-term support. So this is one area. The second area I think is all around using innovation, but innovation not only with technology, which we also use, but also really finding ways to improvise, to innovate, to find solutions that are on the ground, to find local partners. Just now one of our staff members, and this is really news from yesterday, was able to build very strong partnership on the Romanian side actually. So we expanded our work in Romania with a local municipality, very quickly they built a logistics supply chain and now we have a very big warehouse that we’re using to receive and ship medical supplies into the Ukraine. So I think being able to partner, being able to find creative solutions on the ground is also something that is a skill that we developed over the years and I think there’s something very Israeli about it.
So I wanted to pause on this picture for a minute and Hagit, one of the things you told me on the ground fairly early on at the border was about the challenges you were facing around protection issues, around human trafficking, you know, and that actually, and you could see it and hear it, that there were private individuals wandering up and down the lines of refugees offering lifts and rides, places that were often, you know, very expensive and if that was the least of people’s problems, that was a good thing and that there were a lot of issues you were seeing. How is the Moldovan government handling that? And the reports I have read is that unfortunately this is not getting any better, particularly because your time shared, this is often women with young children separated from the rest of their families.
Right, so this is a very serious situation which is being faced all over eastern Europe now. And what we’re doing is mainly working with the government and the coordination and how do you manage information, and how do you collect information, and how do you provide the support to the community that’s arriving, the minute they’re arriving, and understanding where they are, what their options are, where they can go, where they can receive support, receive assistance, and how do we in between strengthen the services around of the country to be able and really kind of take the people to their next phase in the journey, which is usually either in the shelters in Chișinău, or in the neighbour countries like in Poland, et cetera, or Romania. But this is a very concerning issue. So I don’t think there’s yet a very strong solution other than trying to really register the drivers that are coming, trying to receive the information from them. It takes a lot of capacity. We’re working also with Israeli technology to try and support this information management. We started a collaboration with the Ministry of Interior to try in a very closed security way to understand who the people are and what their motivations are. It’s very complex. ‘Cause I think just maybe one more thing to mention, and I’m not sure it gives a complete answer, but I think this is an ongoing question that we’re continuing to cope with and see how we can support specifically in the coordination is, you know, the community in Moldova, the hosting community, not only the NGOs and the government, and the municipality, et cetera, The community is taking a very strong lead in providing support to the refugee crisis. Many of them are coming and giving women and children lifts to hosting houses around the different villages. We’re working with different villages who are providing this kind of hosting mechanism, which is probably stronger at the time to say the least, than shelters around the city. And we’re trying to support these communities as well, both in receiving the refugees, both in building their capacity on how to work and how to be with such a vulnerability and yeah, just try to be there and accompany them throughout the process. So this is a very concerning issue that we’re still deal dealing with.
So one of the things that surprised me is, you know, Moldova is not new to these issues because there is often an issue around human trafficking as Moldova is one of the entry points into Europe, but there seem to be very few systems in place or a kind of lack of awareness and training. How are you hoping to improve that in the long term and engage with some of the agencies to improve that?
So first of all, we’re working hand in hand with the Moldovan government and authorities also to accompany them now while the kind of emergency is still uprising, but also as an opportunity to strengthen their services both to their community and the long-term consequences of this refugee crisis as well. So we’re working very strongly with strengthening the referral mechanism that exists. We’re working with three local hotlines that are providing support with people for people with disabilities, for women, for safe migration, for trafficking topics, and for children, and how they can really kind of export their knowledge, and access, and have proper access for the refugees in need. So we’re building the capacity of the psychologists working there. We’re supporting the platform of, again, of information, of how they sort the information, how they provide that information to the refugees, and how do they then kind of accompany it and understand, you know, the shifts of where the refugees are going and how their needs are changing. So I think that’s a very strong part of that.
I would just add on the human trafficking issue. It’s a huge concern, it’s a really huge concern. And you mentioned currently yes, Moldova is unfortunately known to have big issue of human trafficking into Europe and into other western countries and middle Eastern countries. So we’re very concerned and we already heard both individual stories, of course news reports of already many cases of traffickers and I think we even saw in the border there is a very kind of fragile situation, very vulnerable situation where when people are crossing, there are organisation like us, but there’s also a lot of private individuals who are offering different kind of lifts. Some of them for money, some are not for money, but definitely there is a huge, huge issue of safety and protection. And that’s also one of the reasons we think Moldova is a place that will need a lot of support both immediately and in the long term. We have been, as IsraAID we have been working a lot on similar issues in other countries. In Nepal, which has a huge trafficking issues. In the Philippines, in South Sudan where we have a very long-term programme to support survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. So unfortunately we are not new to these issues and this is something that we are planning to work on both in terms of prevention, in terms of mental health support for survivors, for victims for people who will suffer from that and in terms of capacity strengthening for local organisation and the local government in terms of training and support, and also the use of technology that Hagit mentioned that we do believe could play a very meaningful role in data collection, in documentation and monitoring in this crisis.
So when you arrived, you came initially with a small team and then you brought more from Israel, but there is obviously a language barrier. You know, I noticed there was not a huge amount of English spoken amongst the refugees and you know, even when we were trying to give out, you know, winter clothing, there was an awful lot of hand signals going on. In terms of bringing in local support and having that language barrier. But also Yotam you showed me the kind of trauma kit, psychology children’s kit that you give to parents when they cross the border to try and help the kids process that. Just talk a little bit about both the language piece and how you are kind of, you know, giving them the, Psych 101 to trauma when they arrive.
Sure, I can start and Hagit feel free to jump in. So yeah, so as I mentioned, psychosocial and mental health support is really one of our core areas of intervention, at this rate for more than 10 years now. And we have developed different tools and models and one of the tools that we developed that our team in Israel developed is these resilience kits that are very carefully designed to help, in that case, mothers cope with the trauma and is basically a toolkit to give them some very basic, simple, but very effective activities that they could do with their children to help them cope with this crisis and to help themselves cope. So, you know, it’s different art materials, and some activities that help release their stress. It’s, you know, these kind of pressure balls that, you know, you think you can buy this for a dollar, but actually they could be really, really helpful in helping people, you know, release their stress and deal with their anxiety. So it’s different, very, very simple daily things that we all have and we all use and our team of professionals basically designed a whole toolbox of helping, in this case mothers cope with the trauma. In terms of the language and the culture, yes, you’re right, it’s a very important and very big gap. People, the Ukrainian for the most case don’t speak English and also the Moldovan host community, English is a challenge. So a lot of the people that we bring speak either Russian, Ukrainian or Romanian, which is the main language in Moldova. Thankfully in Israel we have a large Russian speaking community and we were able very quickly to recruit and bring an amazing group of professionals. Mental health specialists, medical specialists, education specialists who all speak the language and can provide both the immediate support for the refugees and also train and strengthen the capacity of the Moldovan host community.
So Hagit, once the refugees look to leave the border, which in some cases is, you know, if the buses are running a few hours after they arrive. On the day we were there, you know, there was a traffic problem and many of those refugees had been stood there for hours on end in the cold and some ended up spending the night in the IsraAID tent before they could make it to the city. So talk us through what the process looks like as the refugees cross the border and are kind of ready to continue, and where do they then go?
Right, so when the refugees cross the border, so there are buses that take them to the location of the tents where our tent is to set up there together with additional volunteer tents who are providing just immediate care of food and hot drinks to warm them up. And that’s where we can immediately provide them with a relief supply that Yotam was talking about, with the winterization kits, with child kits and also with the resilient kits, which is a really kind of psychosocial first aid kit that like Yotam said, we’ve developed when we were in Greece. And I’ll just add to that something that one of the reasons this was developed is that when you meet this community, you see kind of the insecurity of having no idea, not where they’re going to be the next couple of hours, the next day, not when they’ll have an opportunity to change their child’s nappy, not when they’ll eat. So part of this very engaging tool is an opportunity to kind of bring the refugees inside and provide them with information. So in Greece we were providing them with maps, just understanding where they are and what the next steps are. And here, like Yotam said, we’re providing them very essential psychosocial first aid tools to identify when your child is also in distress and what are kind of the first elements that you can provide to support with breathing activities, with drawing activities, et cetera.
So when the women and children and elderly community arrive, they first come into the tent and receive this kind of first care of information, of just the initial kind of support that they need until the buses can take them to the next destination. It’s very hard to kind of just imagine the cold and the stress that there is in the air with the amount of people there, the buses are taking them either to Romania, to Poland, to other countries around, and many of the buses are taking them into the city, into Chișinău. And Chișinău you have more than 85 shelters in the city that people are being directed towards. So you have private shelters, you have municipality shelters, and you have governmental shelters of the Ministry of Labour and social protection. And when they arrive to the shelters, we see here in the picture actually, one of the shelters that we were working in for a while and actually two days ago was closed. This is Manesh, it’s a sports stadium with 800 beds. I think the day that there were few refugees, it was 600, the most refugees stood in almost 900. And over here they arrived. They receive some food, some water, some medical assistance and just, you know, just sit and wait, try and understand what their next step is, when they can leave the country. Those who have less financial possibilities and capacities, where will they stay and what will they do? Many of these shelters provide a 48 hour response and some of them provide support and stay for a week. So all of these are kind of transitional, you don’t see anything that’s very set and the movement is large. And in this specific shelter, like Yotam was talking about, this is one of the areas, a few of them that we’re already operating today where we were strengthening the local services of providing child-friendly spaces, of work with a community of women, providing, again, the essential needs and working mainly at this stage with the local authorities to strengthen their possibilities of response to this situation.
And who’s paying for these shelters? You touched on how poor Moldova as a country. Is this the government supporting this? Is this other international NGOs and how long can Moldova sustain this?
So it’s a combination and I think this is part of the reason why the Moldovan government is starting to close some of the shelters because of the capacity, the financial capacity that, is getting really, really challenging and difficult. But the places the shelters themselves, it’s hard to even call them shelters. They’re, being called centres. You see refugees in cinemas where they put beds, you see refugees in old hospitals that aren’t operating where they added beds, here in the sports stadium. So it’s very kind of, you know, the country obviously was not prepared for this kind of a disaster and could never imagine that this kind of a disaster would encounter their poor already country that is struggling in providing enough services, quality of services to their communities. So yes, I think we’re seeing a lot of more private efforts being done. We’re seeing the EU, which is impressive, and the ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Education starting to attempt in integrating children into the school system. So seeing, you know, at the moment you have over 100,000 people staying in Moldova. So these are people at the moment that the government is focusing on, on how they can both support their integration into the local systems, and at the same time how they can, you know, create a mechanism where people can live a daily lives with shelter, food, and water, which is now becoming more and more difficult.
So what type of activities were you running in this shelter that we’re looking at?
So at the very first we were trying to provide medical provision, providing support for the nurses and doctors that were in this shelter on behalf of the Moldovan government, both in assisting them in how to respond to this kind of crisis and this kind of vulnerability that was the first time that they’ve encountered and also in medical equipment that they had gaps in. Just an interesting reminder, that usually medication is brought into Moldova from Ukraine. So with all of this crisis, there’s a big existing fear and anxiety of what will happen once medication will start to kind of, you know, go down. So other than the medical provision, we also had a very large child-friendly space here that provided resilient activities for the children and provided an opportunity for our psychosocial specialists to also work with the parents, with the mothers especially while our educational experts were in the child-friendly space. We started a series of capacity building for volunteers that were working day and night in this setting. So providing also self-care tools and also psychosocial first aid and how do you respond to this amount of people, needs, languages, et cetera. This specific shelter as well provided a lot of support for minority communities. So the language, the culture, there were many different variants to provide support to and really understand very, very quickly. And also maybe the last thing that I would say about this specific shelter and additional ones is, here you see different kinds of needs and gaps. So if on the border we’re distributing a lot of resilience kits, and information kits, and baby kits and winterization kits, so over here we’re distributing a lot of hygiene kits. We distributed over 2000 hygiene kits to provide initial support with the day-to-day that these people were facing.
I’m going to, Shawna can you re-share the screen? I think your screen share is frozen so we’re not seeing the next photo. So obviously much of the world has been absorbed by Covid for the last two years. How were you navigating the covid situation and is that becoming a problem?
I mean, I’ll start it. Look, it’s just adding another level of vulnerability to an already very difficult situation. I will say that, you know, we definitely see more urgent needs and issues right now than Covid. Having said that, it is definitely another layer of our concern for us, for our team, and obviously for the communities, both the host community and the Ukrainian refugees we’re working with. You know, it’s very hard to keep any kind of, to follow any covid related restrictions in a situation like that. I mean, you showed the pictures in the border, the lines, the cold, the, you know, when we were there at the tent in the border there were in a tent that could usually fit 20 people, there were more than a hundred people, you know, crowded in. It’s very difficult and obviously it’s another layer of concern that I believe we will have to focus and bring more attention to in the next few weeks and months that will follow. You know, when we have to, for us, from a logistics perspective, we’re taking, you know, all the security measures to make sure everyone is vaccinated and tested and following our kind of Israel protocols. But it’s definitely just adding an extra challenge and, you know, we’re seeing now rise in cases in Moldova, in Israel, in Europe. So I would just say that it’s just, you know, just adding another layer of complexity to an already very difficult and complicated situation, which we will have to address as we did. I mean, COVID has been, we had a global covid response in 16 countries, in some of these countries we’re still operating covid related programmes, which include both distribution of protection equipment, you know, masks, hygiene items, et cetera. And a programme that we did in partnership with the Cures Foundation in Eswatini to support the local government, the Ministry of Health with the vaccination programme. So I don’t know if we will do similar programmes here, but could be that, you know, the supplies that we’re bringing will also include some protection equipment related to Covid. And once the situation will be just a little bit more stable, I believe we’ll have to invest more resources in addressing this issue as well.
So Hagit, you told me and your colleagues the same, that you know, you see this as a several year project. You know, IsraAID is often the first in, but they are always the last out. And, you know, for our audience right now, we are looking at the, you know, the first month, unfortunately we don’t see any sign of a slowdown, but even if there was a ceasefire or an end to the hostilities tomorrow, IsraAID would still need to stay on the ground. So what does a long-term role look like here and how do you make that sustainable?
Right, so I think that’s the most interesting question that we continue asking ourselves from day one when we arrive into the field, when providing the immediate response, immediate relief items and support, we’re trying to identify at the same time what are the long-term effects, that long-term impact that this kind of situation and crisis has on the country that it’s in. So I think specifically in this situation when we’re, you know, sure that the war, the operation would end very quickly and the media, you know, will probably disappear in a few weeks from now. So the destruction that we see that this war created, not only in the Ukraine but in the neighbour countries as well, the insecurity, the change in the quality of life, I think the kind of break of structure of families where you see women and children without, you know, their husbands who have stayed behind. So the long-term impact of this is insane and it’s very, very concerning, and that’s why that’s something that we kind of emphasise that the long-term effect of this is crucial and very important both for the refugees and the hosting community, and that’s where we need a lot of support and a lot of attention from the world community to really continue and finance and support this long-term effect and impact. So I think one, accompanying, like I said, the situation and the vulnerability is going to take a long time and like we see that these crisis and situation, they unfold additional crisis situations. Like we were talking about the protection elements and understanding on how the services within the country need strengthening and need support. And although I have to say that the services in Moldova were really impressive. Like although we speak about Moldova as a very small country, a very poor country, they have really quality of professionals, quality of services, but who have just never, never ever, you know, thought that they would interact with this kind of massive situation. So the long term both goes to continuing to accompany the situation and the refugees as they settle into the country. But both in empowering and strengthening with our professional tools and vast experience the services that the country provides, which I think on a very long-term level is how do we equip countries around the world and communities around the world to be resilient and to be able and cope and be prepared to support and react to any additional crisis or disaster that they encounter. So I think once that situation is unfolded and the country has the stability and the resilience, that’s when we know that there’s no more need in our service. So yeah, I think that’s the main point.
I would just add on that, and I really agree with every word Hagit said, but we are really concerned about what’s going to happen in few weeks. I mean, we are very moved to see how the international community, the media, donors, volunteers, companies have stepped in, in this crisis, and again, we’ve been doing this for a while, you know, we responded to crisis in 56 countries, I have not seen in my life so much support coming from all over the world. So that’s really moving and really heartwarming, but I’m very concerned because I know it’s very limited and I know that, you know, the nature of our world right now is, you know, whenever there’s something new comes everyone will move on and already we are seeing a little bit the world attention shifting from Ukraine. And I think what happens when the world attention is shifting, obviously there will be a lot less support. A lot of the organisation and the volunteers and the donations that are coming now will be, you know, will fade. And then in a way the real work start. And what we’re seeing when that happens is that the the people, both the host communities and the refugees are kind of retraumatized because they rightfully so feel abandoned by the world. They were the centre of attention following a terrible, terrible tragedy and a trauma and then they’re abandoned by the world. So this is really, I guess a call to action and a wake up call. And we learned this, you know, by the work we were doing in the years. In the beginning we were only a disaster response organisation. And after experiencing that in a number of crisis and disasters, we decided that we really have to stay and work side by side with the local community and with the refugees that are arriving. And the areas that we’re looking at is, I mentioned mental health, we’re also going to enter probably education, which is a big focus for us, again, together with the local community, whether it’ll be integration in the local system or special education programmes for the Ukrainian, where as I said, we just started shipping medical supplies into the Ukraine. And Carly, as you mentioned, even in the best case scenario, which we are all praying for a ceasefire in Ukraine, we know that the recovery in the country will take years. So we will be there together with the Ukrainians to help them rebuild their communities and rebuild their lives.
So since you’ve arrived on the ground in Moldova and since the Moldovan government and the ambassador in Israel requested your help, other countries have followed. So where else is IsraAID now and how do you expect your roles to grow?
So we’re still very much in Moldova and we see ourselves staying in Moldova for the next few years for sure. So for the time being, we’re not planning to leave Moldova, but we have expanded to Romania, which is part of the EU but not part of Schengen and we have seen many of the refugees from Moldova continuing to Romania, and we set ourselves in the southern part of Romania, sorry, the southern border of Ukraine in a place called Tulcea where we’re setting up our logistics hub to ship medical supplies into the Ukraine and to look on the other protection and education issues in Romania similar to our programmes in Moldova. So that’s in the very immediate. And we’re also looking, again, we’re looking and it’s not something that we have decided yet. I think we may move into an area in the Ukraine that is not in the war zone. Again, this is something that requires serious security assessment, but this is something we’re seriously considering because the other number that’s striking that I don’t think a lot of people talking about is that right now in the Ukraine there are 10 million people out of their homes. So about 25% of the population, 3.5 million in the neighbouring countries, and almost 7 million inside the Ukraine. So we know there’s a lot of internally displaced people and this is something we are starting to look at, but also we are very careful of not spreading ourselves too thin and making sure that, you know, we’re not neglecting the communities and the partners that we already have in Moldova.
So, you know, I know when I was there that IsraAID is written all over your t-shirts, and your sweatshirts, and your high-vis jackets. You know, there’s no hiding the Israeli role. There are also a number of other Israeli NGOs on the ground, United Hatzalah, NATAN, you know, the Israeli presence is visible to all. There’s the new Israeli field hospital in Lviv in Ukraine. How is the Israeli presence being received, especially since in some political discord there is a discussion around Israel not doing enough.
I think it’s very well received. Very, very well received by the Ukrainian, by the host community that we are seeing in Moldova and in neighbouring countries too. I mean, IsraAID, as we mentioned, we’re non-political, we’re non-governmental, you know, we see ourselves as representatives of the civil society in Israel and just as we’ve seen from the whole world, it’s the first time that we’re seeing so much support coming from Israel to this crisis, both from individuals, from companies. So, we are actually really moved by it and we see very, very warm and positive responses from both the host communities and the Ukrainian. And I think, you know, there’s other aspect here and it’s also important to clarify. So, you know, there’s a big Jewish community in the Ukraine and there are a lot of organisation who are doing great work focused on the Jewish community, you know, and many of them are going to Israel as olim, what we call like new immigrants to Israel. So this is wonderful. I think for us at IsraAID, especially because also we see that there’s a lot of support going to the Jewish community, it’s important for us to support everyone, Jews and non-Jews, and everyone who needs support and focused on the most vulnerable.
Thank you, so believe it or not, we have come to the end of our hour and we definitely could have kept going, you know, those 48 hours I spent with your team on the ground were on every level, every emotion possible. But I have to say, spending that time with you guys also gave me hope that actually IsraAID is there on the ground along with, you know, a number of other partners really doing work that without it, I don’t know where those refugees would be. So, you know Hagit, I know that you had actually kind of retired from this business and were in London with your kids and with no hesitation you got on a plane and you know, the Jewish community in Israel should be incredibly proud of IsraAID in everything they do. And I know, you know, Wendy and Linda, and Philip, and Nate and Francis are incredibly proud of our partnership with you. But you know, we all owe you a huge thank you and the months and years ahead will be very difficult. But knowing that IsraAID and others who are doing great work are on the ground is very reassuring. So I’m going to hand it back over to Wendy.
Thank you, Carly.
Well, thank you very, very, very much for that. Honestly riveting presentation. It is heartbreaking to see what’s going on. And as I would like to echo Carly’s words, we are very, very proud to be working together with you, and I speak on behalf of, as we said, my brother, my sister, and my parents. And honestly both of you, it’s just astonishing how you go and you risk your life, you’ve got your own families, your own children, and you put in these communities, you know, before your own at a certain moment in time. So I just want to say thank you on behalf of all of us, all the participants, and just really, I’m very, very moved by this presentation and it’s heartbreaking to see what’s going on and who knows when there’ll be an end, But and thank you very much. Thank you for this presentation. And Carly, as always, thank you for this.
And for those of you who want to support IsraAID’s work, please visit the IsraAID website and I know we had some follow up questions around like specific roles and support. So if you email into the Lockdown University email address then Lauren or Judi will be very happy to connect you up with your Yotam and the team.
Yeah, and they’ll be very appreciative of it too. Thank you. You know where your money’s going. You know where the finance is going, so thank you very much. Thank you team. And yes, be safe. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks for your time. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Goodnight, thank you.