It is still hard to believe but there’s a war zone just three hours away from my home.
Russians had invaded Ukraine and their attack is brutal and targeted to civil people, schools, residential areas, hospitals…
It happened a week ago and since then almost 1M Ukrainians fleed their country and found shelter in Polish homes.

There are NGOs helping out which are giving away food, clothing and other necessities and at he end of this post you’ll find a list of reliable organizations which are accepting donations.

It is a time to act and we decided to accept a family of refugees to our home – three women and a eight year old girl. They fled Charków (Kharkiv) in Eastern Ukraine – one of the most affected cities in Ukraine. They hid in basements, cooked food for Ukrainian soldiers, dreaded to fall asleep and got used to the sound of bombs and sirens.
They are now living in our house, and are fully dependent on us.

We are also supporting two other families – still trying to find a place to live for them.
One family left Lwów (Lviv) and is currently living in a single room with their 20 year old daughter / granddaughter who came to Poland a couple of months ago to work so she could support her family financially.
The other family is five people aged 16 to 70 who fled Kijów (Kiev) and they will join their son/brother/uncle in his small apartment. He works for a minimal wage and is unable to support 5 additional family members from his own small home budget.

So we offered to help with food and bills until all the families stand on their feet again and are able to find jobs and be self-contained again.

Please note many of them are traumatized, unable to sleep and eat and it will take some time to recover from war trauma. Most of them don’t speak Polish nor English and some of them are too young/old to work. Thus our support is needed for weeks or months to come. This is not a sprint, this is a marathon!

I decided to use 50% of my earnings from research services for keeping our Ukrainian guests.
If you’d like to help me support the refugees – you might want to hire me to help with your genealogy project. Feel free to contact me at polishgenius.research@gmail.com or using contact page.

Please note, I am not asking for any donations! If you would like to donate your money here’s the list of the recommended NGOs:

PAH (Polska Akcja Humanitarna): 
https://www.siepomaga.pl/en/pah-ukraina
https://www.pah.org.pl/en/ 

Internationa Red Cross: 
https://www.icrc.org/en/donate/ukraine

and also:
Ukrainian National Bank – please note this account is for funding military needs!
https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-spetsrahunok-dlya-zboru-koshtiv-na-potrebi-armiyie

Be safe!
Kasia