136 educational events for 4106 participants — this is the result of our project supporting the capacity of the social protection system in the first six months of 2023.
This year, we are helping to deepen social protection awareness in all regions. Our regional teams regularly organize webinars, seminars, and trainings for staff of specialized institutions and IDPs, providing up-to-date information on related legislation.
“The UN Refugee Agency aims to help internally displaced and war-affected people protect their rights and access basic services. Timely receipt of living allowances is one of the key aspects of ensuring the protection of IDPs’ rights. At the same time, we focus on finding long-term sustainable solutions to their situation,” says Ms. Tomoko Ishihara, a UNHCR representative who joined the “Accommodation Assistance for IDPs” webinar in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Between January and June, we held:
- 71 webinars/seminars for social protection institutions (2641 attendees);
- 65 webinars/seminars for IDPs (1465 attendees).
During the meetings with regional lawyers and project lawyers, we covered the following topics:
- registration of IDPs;
- compensation for destroyed/damaged housing;
- labor and social rights of IDPs under martial law;
- preparation of appeals, complaints, and requests for information;
- peculiarities of legal and social assistance to IDPs;
- social guarantees and benefits for IDPs;
- restoration of lost documents;
- free medical services for IDPs under the medical guarantees program.
“To ensure that the pertaining benefits are provided in full, it is important to adhere to the principle that money follows the client/patient/student. After all, most benefits are state-funded. You need to know about your rights and social guarantees. Thank you for teaching us,” says Maria Mykolayishyn, a participant in the seminar “Peculiarities of providing legal and social assistance to IDPs” in Drohobych.
“The seminar was interesting for us, IDPs. We did not even know that the state supports IDPs on so many levels. But there are still plenty of issues that we don’t know how to solve,” says Olena Vovk, a participant in the seminar “Social guarantees and benefits for IDPs” in Stryi.
For social protection workers in all regions, we organized:
- trainings on IDP registration and assignment of IDPs’ living allowance in the Unified Social Information System (USIS);
- trainings on combating burnout.
Besides, we arranged a webinar “Basics of using Google: mail, tables, documents, forms” for social protection institutions in the Chernihiv region.
Legislation in the field of social protection is constantly changing, so we will continue to hold educational meetings and share useful information. We are implementing these initiatives within the framework of the project “Supporting the capacity of the social protection system to register internally displaced persons” funded by the UN Refugee Agency in Ukraine.
