Local Catalonian council turn schools into shelters for displaced Ukrainians

Through the Catalan Development Cooperation Fund (FCCD), local councils have donated €30,000 to German NGO Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund.

The money will be spent on appliances to be used in schools converted to shelters for internally displaced Ukrainians. Facilities in Styri, western Ukraine and Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine need the money to buy washing machines, refrigerators and microwaves for people residing there who have escaped the war’s frontlines.

So far, Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund has turned a daycare centre and primary school in Styri into housing. This has provided shelter for 100 people but it is thought that there are some 35,000 internally displaced people, as reported by catalannews.com.

President of FCCD Isidre Pineda has told the Catalan News Agency (ACN) that “there is a real crisis of internally displaced people”. He emphasised that amongst these Ukrainian people there are those “who have lost everything”.

One displaced person Olha Vdovina living in one of the shelters told ACN how difficult it is to live this way. She and her family were evicted from their home in February, shortly after the beginning of the war in Ukraine. She was given 10 minutes to leave and her children have had speech problems as a result of the trauma since then.

Eastern Ukrainian Shatokin Maksym has also been displaced and told ACN that he waits for a call to join the Ukrainian army.

Although life goes on in the nearby city of Lviv, the imposed 11pm curfew underscores all sense of daily normalcy.

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