We have been recently joined by two new families that both arrived last week.

Tetyana with her daughter Alisa, sister Inna and niece Vika came from Energodar, a city that has been occupied for several weeks now. Their trip to The Netherlands was very tiresome and difficult. Their host Gerard gave them a warm welcome and a safe place to stay in Landsmeer.
 

In addition, Kiril with his wife and 3 children arrived last week. They are now safe and comfortable in the house of Ad and Anneke in Landsmeer.

There is great news to share with you about Oksana, the English teacher that came to The Netherlands three weeks ago. Since then she found her own place to live and thanks to the help of Guido's sister, she was able to start this week as English teacher for Ukrainian refugee children at a school in Amsterdam.
 

More updates to come next week!

Dears All,

The next phase of UkraineFamiliesNL is on the way: we are professionalizing our small organization to ensure this becomes a sustainable initiative. Firstly, today we have become an official foundation by Dutch law. This will ensure transparency on how funding is used and bring tax benefits to individuals and companies that donate to the initiative.

We need to thank to the unpaid support from actusnotarissen.nl/, a Dutch notary with locations in Amsterdam and the surrounding cities. Below a picture of the three directors at their offices: Guido, Gosia and Vincent. We are very happy that Vincent has joined the team. Besides being a caring individual, he brings a large network as well as his experience as attorney-at-law, specialized in commercial-, corporate- and labor-law.

Since this week have support from Tanya in the role of Family Coordinator. Tanya has moved five years ago form the Ukraine and speaks Ukrainian, Russian, English and Dutch. Each week she will contact all families and hosts to ensure we are working on the right things to support the families.  Now we have reached some level of stability, we are in the preparation phase to bring over more families.

The pressure point is finding accommodation where the new families can stay at least for five months. Some creativity will be required due to the housing shortage in The Netherlands. We are considering finding accommodation in buildings like unused holiday-homes, an empty church or other. Although UkraineFamiliesNL foundation will not cover commercial rent; we can handle liabilities, utility expenses and municipal taxes.

Tonya, Voka (17) and Nikita (7) spent their last Sunday in Amsterdam ARTIS zoo.  They are staying with Michiel, a wonderful host who is doing everything he can to take care of Tonya’s family. Here is a couple of sentences he shared with us:

“It is certainly not easy to take care of the whole family. We suddenly have to eat, shower, watch TV, sleep and live with 3 extra people. But it is well worth it, because it is necessary and there is nothing more beautiful and also more important than helping people who really need it. And they are marvellous people!

Last Sunday we went to a zoo in Amsterdam and for the first time in a week we saw a smile on their faces. There is nothing to laugh about for them, but it is nice to forget yourself for a while.”