Guests and sponsors

Yesterday evening a match was made between two equally lovely couples, one a nurse and a retired doctor from Bakhmut, Donetsk (eastern Ukraine), which has been heavily shelled by Russian forces. They can be seen in the photo of Bob's beginners English class. The sponsors are an accountant and a part-time vicar in an affluent village in the southeast of England. One couple with nothing, now, and the other couple with everything. They managed to find a link over champagne and the wines of Ukraine!

This morning we met with a Ukrainian student who is trying to apply for a BTEC at Nelson and Colne College. The difficulties of a standard online application without a national insurance number and GCSEs!

After lunch we retreated to a leafy park in a temperature of 32°C in the shade. We  had a meeting late afternoon with the student humanitarian aid group we have been supporting, who may be able to help us to extend our stay.

Today we learned that a family member of one of our guests has died in the war in Ukraine. He left behind a wife and young child. This brought the war home to the sponsors, who said that the war in Ukraine has dropped from the news headlines, overtaken by finding a new PM and some unusually hot weather.

There is still a desperate need for sponsors, including for families who were, initially, easy to place, eg a mother and child. We're finding, now, that the sponsors remaining are in very rural, albeit beautiful, locations, which are not desirable or practical for refugees, particularly with children.

We also learned today of the closure of the largest refugee centre (Galeria Plaza) in Krakow (where we were previously based) at the end of this month. The 500 or so refugees will be found temporary housing elsewhere. Fortunately, the director of the refugee centre where we are now based, in Lviv, confirmed that they will not be closing because, he says, more than 350 people live there and this number will only increase.