Escaping Ukraine - Part 4

The new reality

With Volodymyr and his family settling into English life, what about life back home? With their home still under Russian occupation their house now had Russian soldiers living in it. Volodymyr is doing his best to manage his business from the UK with the connection from his free SIM card provided by unconnected.org.  However, Russia has decreed that unless the business  owner is in Ukraine the business will be nationalised to the Russian state.

What about his Mother? At 75 she doesn’t like technology and the family need to call her neighbours phone to speak to her and check she’s OK, which they do every week. As for other friends and family, their prepaid mobile phones in Ukraine are frequently down as they struggle to find places to top-up their balance. However they are able to provide unconnected.org with their phone numbers and through generous donations from around the world keep their phones up and running more often than not.

The children are picking up English at school and use their free tablets to attend Ukrainian school, once their English school day has finished.  With the help English learning software provided by unconnected.org’s business donors their situation is improving quickly.

So what’s the dream for Volodymyr and his family? They want to go home and pick up their lives there as soon as possible. Their stay in England was never meant to be permanent, but while they’re here they are safe. They don’t know what they will find when they return but home is where the heart is. The question is, it’s been one year already, how much longer?

unconnected.org are still supporting Ukrainians both in the UK and Ukraine. In the UK we are supplying SIM Cards with 6 months of free call, texts and 20GB per month of data, devices and accessories to help as many people as possible.

With the infrastructure crumbling in Ukraine the ability to buy phone top-up credits is challenging. With our donors support we have been topping up 1000's of phone plans of people left behind in Ukraine with phone credits, for loved ones to communicate, you need both phones connected!

A year on, unconnected.org has remained committed to supporting Ukrainians and our other causes. You can demonstrate your organisation’s commitment to supporting the unconnected here, or contact us at help@unconnected.org and see how you can help!