Our 2024! - Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya

Another year of the work of the Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya has passed in the context of a full-scale war. We worked together with our partners to implement humanitarian projects, which increased the number of activities and expanded the geography of coverage of target groups. It was a year of construction, intricate logistics, extraordinary requests, and thousands of words of correspondence with the military and volunteers from all over the country that complemented our picture of reality.

We will break with established traditions and serve the "sweet" first. We are talking about non-standard requests that we managed to close during the year. Last winter, the Committee purchased snowmobiles and trailers for targeted delivery of humanitarian aid in the winter weather. At first, our volunteer Sashko Shershun transported the equipment to Uzhhorod, and then Andriy Lyubka and his drivers provided logistics to Sumy region.

Another extraordinary request was for a compact all-terrain fire truck. It was needed to localize and extinguish fires in forest belts and forests where large special vehicles were not suitable, and elongated fire hoses burned and melted without reaching the target. The task was not easy and not cheap, but the persistence of our French friend Jacques Duplessy resulted in the transfer of the necessary vehicle to our Defenders in November 2024.

There were also a few dozen bicycles that came to Uzhhorod from Switzerland from the Association "Network Switzerland – Transcarpathia / Ukraine" (NeSTU). We donated them to the needs of social and medical institutions, shelters, and volunteer communities, and in response we received not only gratitude but also positive feedback on the comfortable vehicles.

We are also pleased that last year, in February and June, we managed to transfer 2 more fully equipped field hospitals to meet the needs of our military.

Now to the current affairs!

First of all, we continued the project "Improving the Protection of Children in Emergencies in Ukraine by Providing Safe Shelters, Food and Non-Food Items, and Psychosocial Support", which the Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya is implementing with the support of "terre des hommes Deutschland e.V." and funding from the German Federal Foreign Office. Here is a brief summary of the project year 2024.

As part of the psychosocial support of the population, the Committee’s lawyer Yevheniya Melesh provided legal advice to 150 citizens. We also continued to support the NGO "Vigorous Moment", whose team trains 15 psychologists to work with socially vulnerable groups, and the NGO "Kharkiv Foundation for Psychological Research", which trains 10 playback theater coaches. Part of the project included psychosocial support trainings conducted by the coordinator of the medical direction of CAMZ, psychologist Tetyana Hoydash, for employees of social institutions.

The infrastructure part of the project is primarily about renovating additional buildings of the Vilshany Orphanage. The first phase of the overhaul has already been completed, and the buildings are ready for the opening of the Supported Living School and the palliative care unit. As part of the second phase of the project, repairs have begun in the third building, which will become the basis for the development of social services in the community and the implementation of measures in the context of the deinstitutionalization reform being implemented in the country.

The MHPSS direction includes the implementation of two projects – "Providing Psychosocial Support to the Population of Zakarpattia Oblast in War Conditions" and "Mental Health Support Program for Medical Staff of Ukrainian Hospitals" – which are implemented by specialists from the NGO "Vigorous Moment" with the financial support of the Fondation de France. Within the framework of these projects, 483 beneficiaries received 1127 hours of individual counseling, and 11 psychologists are undergoing specialized training under the CETA program. In the spring of 2024, activities for medical workers began in three hospitals: the Regional Clinical Center of Neurosurgery and Neurology (Uzhhorod), Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Council, and the City Clinical Children’s Hospital No. 16 of the Kharkiv City Council. Finally, we would like to thank our partners from the Association "Network Switzerland – Transcarpathia / Ukraine" (NeSTU) for their financial support of the "Mental Health Camp" project – rehabilitation camps for families of the fallen (Kharkiv region), which is run by the NGO "Mental Recovery" and has already provided support to more than 150 people.

In order to improve the competencies of the staff of social institutions in Zakarpattia Oblast, the Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya organized a study visit of specialists from the Vilshany Orphanage to social institutions in Switzerland. In addition, experience exchange events were held in Vilshany, where last year Swiss trainers Claudia Leu, Chantal Moor, Pia Werthmüller, and Toune de Montmollin worked, among others, and conducted therapy sessions with the residents of the facility.

2024 is the year of the 15th anniversary of our "Parasolka". Among the achievements of the past year, the municipal institution "Social Habilitation and Rehabilitation Center "Parasolka" opened a "School of Temporary Residence", which currently involves four residents of the Center. Now, the institution is preparing an inclusive café and pastry shop for launch, which is currently undergoing renovation.

Unfortunately, the security situation in the country has not changed for the better, and last year our shelters were still needed by residents of frontline and temporarily occupied settlements. For example, in 2024, 117 people, half of whom were children, were sheltered in a temporary accommodation facility for mothers with children in Uzhhorod. In general, the situation with shelters looked like this:

Last year, the Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya managed to find funding for repairs to the IDP shelter in Pylypets village, Khust district. The shelter is designed to accommodate 24 people.

The project that raised the most questions from beneficiaries last year was "Hybrid Solutions". "Why does the MEDICAL Aid Committee in Zakarpattya deal with energy issues?", – asked us the heads of educational institutions in Rivne region. It was there that we implemented the pilot stage of the project together with "Electricians without borders", installing the first four solar stations with electricity storage systems for backup power in two specialized schools, an inclusive center and a rural gymnasium. Having received a positive assessment from the monitoring mission, the Committee was able to expand both the geography of the project and its sectoral spectrum. In the fall and winter, social and medical institutions in Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Lviv regions were added to the list of beneficiaries.

We are grateful to the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs for its financial support of the "Hybrid Solutions" project. By the way, in 2024, we twice received a positive assessment from independent experts for the work we did.

Since we are talking about energy sources and other important things that were a response to the challenges of wartime, we will illustrate this area of work as well.

And for this one, we thank our tireless partners from the Association "SAFE" (France)

The largest generator that the Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya has donated to the national energy sector since the beginning of the full-scale russian invasion is a 660 kW trailer generator weighing 18 tons. It was donated by our friend from Switzerland, Michael Roffler, founder of the NGO "ProUkraїna", to support the municipal sector in Kramatorsk. In general, the largest generator that the Committee has transferred to support the national infrastructure since the beginning of the full-scale war had a capacity of 2000 kW and came to Ukraine from the Association "SAFE" (France).

The medical direction has been and remains the key one in our work. According to preliminary estimates, in 2022-2024, volunteers of the humanitarian warehouse packed and sent specialized cargoes with aid to almost 400 hospitals in almost all regions of Ukraine.

Tons and thousands of units of aid were sent all year round to the places where they were needed most. Hundreds of humanitarian shipments are also important indicators of our work throughout the year.

Once again, we thank our partners from Nova Poshta for their reliability, responsibility and timeliness. "Nova Poshta Humanitarian" is our daily assistant in providing medical workers, military personnel, and injured civilians across the country.

And a little more about the partnership. In 2024, the team of the NGO "Iskra Dobra" distributed 871 thousand servings of hot meals and more than 201 thousand liters of water to evacuees and locals in the Kherson region. The Committee supported the initiatives of Chernihiv volunteers, including their "All-Ukrainian Charity Kitchen" in Kherson region and master classes for children in Chernihiv region. And when we were preparing our annual report, our partners from "Iskra Dobra" were setting up their field kitchen for the affected residents of Chernihiv, who were once again hit by hostile russian missiles. In the near future, we will send a shipment of construction materials to the region to repair damaged homes.

Another story from Chernihiv is the restoration of the Bobrovytsia neighborhood, which is being carried out by partners from the NGO "The Unity of Chernihiv". We supported the volunteers with building materials and furniture for repair work, construction of shelters, and improvement of conditions in educational and social institutions.

We will remember 2024, among other things, through meetings with partners, which resulted in cool ideas, effective solutions, and implemented projects. We were glad to see our friends in Zakarpattia from the Association "Parasolka", the Association "Network Switzerland – Transcarpathia / Ukraine" (NeSTU), "terre des hommes Deutschland e.V. ", whose team we met in Berlin, "Electricians without borders", Fondation de France... In turn, the members of the Committee have repeatedly participated in professional discussions on supporting people with disabilities, helping IDPs, protecting human rights, etc. Communication is an important component of the implementation of all our initiatives and a way to solve urgent problems despite distances and obstacles.

We are sure that we could not mention everything again, but we keep our plans for 2025 in mind and in our working notes: to complete the repair work in Vilshany, create another workshop in "Parasolka", further expand the geography of "Hybrid Solutions", and, together with our partners, systematize and intensify initiatives to provide psychosocial support to the population in the communities... Recognizing the current consequences of the russian-Ukrainian war, we continue to provide comprehensive support to internally displaced persons, their socialization and integration in new places of residence. Our military, medics, and rescuers – the people who directly and daily eliminate the consequences of russian military aggression – remain in the focus of attention.

"It is difficult to summarize the results of 2024 and, perhaps, unrealistic to recall everything done in 25 years, which is how long the Committee will be in March 2025. When the organization was 20, we were overcoming the consequences of the pandemic, and when we were 25, we were fighting a full-scale war. The Committee’s team is getting stronger, expanding, strengthening ties with domestic and foreign non-governmental organizations, receiving support from European governments... I am proud of our team, of the way we come together to solve various problems, of the way we complement and support each other. This synergy, in my opinion, is the driver that makes everything we do possible despite the challenges and circumstances, whether it is construction, implementation of energy solutions or covering thousands of kilometers for tens of tons of humanitarian cargo", emphasizes Nataliya Kabatsiy, Director of the Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya.