– Imagine waking up every morning and seeing your window covered with a board instead of a glass pane. It reminds you of the war, of the fact that you cannot repair your own home, of all the horror that is happening. What emotions do you feel? Do you want to be happy, to live? Do you want to win and make this world and yourself better? Not really… That’s why our work in the shelter sector changes not only the people for whom we make repairs – it changes us!” said Anna Borysova, Director for Humanitarian Response, at Shelter Summit 2024, organized by the international humanitarian organization CARE.
This was the first summit attended by representatives of 22 countries, including the UK, Turkey, Nepal, and Vanuatu, in addition to our organization.
Anna Borysova introduced the CF SSS and one of the strategic directions for the restoration of damaged housing in Ukraine. She also spoke about the scale of the destruction in Ukraine, the enormous losses, and the resources needed for recovery. According to her, about 12,500 houses were damaged in the Mykolaiv region alone at the beginning of January this year. In addition, Ms. Anna familiarized the summit participants with the peculiarities and three approaches to housing reconstruction, as well as the advantages and challenges of each of them. Currently, the Foundation is using one of the most challenging options, as it requires constant involvement of the organization’s team at all stages of repairs.
– First, people register, then we inspect their homes and estimate the necessary costs. In the third stage, we sign a trilateral agreement between us, those who will carry out the repairs, and the affected person. This is very important because, in this case, the affected people also have a say in the entire repair process, and our engineers control everything from start to finish,” says Anna Borysova.
Our Foundation started working in 2016 with a local humanitarian intervention in response to the war. After that, we focused on the integration of IDPs and were not involved with shelters by any means. However, after 2022, when the full-scale invasion began, like many other organizations in Ukraine, we did not ignore the new challenges. Our first project with shelters, together with CARE, started in January 2023. Now, we have 5 such projects. Shelter is now one of our strategic directions.