Thank you for your prayers and your support as we continue to provide updates on our ministry in Ukraine. We are humbled by the continued generous response to the UKRAINE: FAMILY EMERGENCY FUND. Our purpose was as both a resource for immediate needs and a proactive reserve for future needs.
In this email, I will share how your generosity is at work already is meeting humanitarian needs that effect the ability of many to survive in the midst of this war. Under the leadership of HopeHouse International Co-Founder and International Director Yuri Yakovlyev, the money from this designated fund is already being actively used to provide food, medicines, and evacuation assistance to those in need.
EVACUATIONS: As we shared in an earlier update, the majority of our HopeHouse Families chose to stay at home to help their communities by sheltering refugees, feeding the hungry, and supporting their churches’ efforts. However, with more widespread and frequent shelling by Russian forces, a few families have gone across the border to Poland, Romania, and Germany.
More and more of our families are evacuating for temporary shelter in Western Ukraine. Because of your donations to this fund, we have been able to help our evacuating families with the costs of fuel for traveling cross country and temporary apartment rentals, food, clothes, medicines and other necessities. We are also working with a humanitarian organization who is trained in successfully helping evacuations in more dangerous areas.
MONEY: Many local banks are still working in unoccupied Ukrainian cities which helps us transfer funds within country to our families. But for our families whose banks have closed, Yuri has found an alternate mechanism with which to transfer money to our staff in Central and Western Ukraine who help us get it into the hands of HopeHouse Families who need assistance during their evacuations.
FOOD, MEDICINE, AID DELIVERY: In recent days, food shortages have been at the core of our concern. God has once again answered prayers and provided a mechanism in the midst of war to deliver food and medicine to our families around the country. Beginning today, Yuri is overseeing the implementation of the following system for aid delivery:
- Re-contact with each family as part of our continual assessment of evolving needs.
- Transfer necessary funds to our staff in Western Ukraine, where banks are still working and grocery stores and pharmacies remain stocked and open.
- Coordinate staff in Western Ukraine to meet each family’s emergency needs.This includes purchasing groceries and medicines to prepare packages to send through a ground transport that Yuri has identified as the main reliable delivery service still operating successfully in most parts of Ukraine.
One of the many things we are grateful to God for is the exponential impact of our ministry — that our work ripples across generations to affect an ever-expanding sphere of people. This effort is no different. We shared in an earlier update that our HopeHouse Fathers who are pastors are sheltering multiple families in their homes and church basements, and many have exhausted or will soon exhaust their funds on hand. This aid delivery system will provide our families and their churches and community members with food parcels to meet the magnitude of needs, which means the support you provide could potentially feed thousands of Ukrainians in the days and weeks to come.
Each day brings new emergency needs and as we continue to work to meet them we thank you again for your prayers and support that make it possible for us to do so.
