Since March 2022, East Europe Foundation has been actively working in the field of humanitarian assistance, providing support to the war-affected population of Ukraine.

In the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, we initiated the Shelter multi-donor program. Leveraging partner organizations’ network, we have distributed over 275 tons of humanitarian aid across 20 regions of Ukraine within a year. We have also established 50 shelters for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), extending assistance to over 65,000 individuals.

Together We Shelter Program continued this activity and provided 26 grants to local organizations in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv, and Kherson regions. The funds were used to repair and equip shelters for IDPs and meet the non-food needs of the affected population. Collectively, the initiative has extended aid to over 11,000 individuals.

In May 2024, the Foundation launched a new humanitarian program, Together for Support, funded by the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund.

The emblem of this initiative, as seen in the accompanying image, is a fusion of traditional ornaments from the three focal regions of the program – Kharkiv, Kherson, and Chernihiv.

The program is being implemented in cooperation with four Ukrainian civil society organizations that have participated in other EEF projects and proved their effectiveness. The involvement of local CSOs allows us to reach hard-to-reach areas of frontline communities and provides first-hand information about the needs of residents.

Among the main goals of the program are as follows:

• Distribution of aid kits to vulnerable IDPs, returnees, and other war-affected people in Kharkiv and Kherson regions. In particular, hygiene kits for large and low-income families, the elderly, and special hygiene kits for people with disabilities; agricultural equipment for war-affected households to support food security and self-sufficiency; non-food items for households, as well as construction tool kits to repair housing damaged by the hostilities.
• Arranging shelters in educational institutions in Chernihiv region, where the security situation allows for offline education. Our goal is to make the shelters suitable and comfortable for children and teachers. Schools and kindergartens were selected in close cooperation with the Department of Education of Chernihiv region. A total of 55 shelters are planned to be equipped.
• Strengthening the capacities of partner CSOs to improve the quality of humanitarian aid they provide to people. Each of the civil society organizations will receive up to 40 hours of mentoring in areas such as legal support, communications, accounting and taxation, project management, accountability to the affected population and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, burnout prevention, etc.

As part of the program, we will also develop a training course on considering the needs of people with disabilities when providing humanitarian aid, which will be available free of charge on Zrozumilo! Educational Online Platform.

Thanks to Together for Support Program, we plan to reach more than 42,000 direct recipients of assistance, of whom more than 50% are children.

The program will continue from May 2024 to March 2025.