The Nippon Foundation to Support Ukrainian Evacuees Wishing to Return Home to Live with Husbands, Parents (1)
The Nippon Foundation has decided to provide Ukrainian evacuees in Japan who wish to return home with airfare and a one-time payment of 300,000 yen (about $2,000) to help them restart their lives in their home country.
The decision was announced by Mr. Jumpei Sasakawa, executive director of the foundation, at a press conference on February 21 to provide an update on the foundation’s support for Ukrainian evacuees ahead of the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Also taking part were two Ukrainian evacuees－Ms. Yuliia Boiarchuk and Ms. Olesandra Godenko.
Mr. Sasakawa said a survey conducted by the foundation in November and December last year showed that while an increasing number of Ukrainians in Japan want to stay here over the long term, some of them requested the foundation to help them return home to live with their husbands and/or care for their elderly parents.
The foundation informed them of the new program on February 14 and about 40 people expressed a desire to return in the near future, some as early as April. Out of some 2,000 Ukrainians the foundation has supported with humanitarian assistance, roughly 200 are expected to apply for assistance to return home over the coming year, Mr. Sasakawa said.
The online poll, covering 1,022 Ukrainian evacuees, found that 39.0% said they “want to stay in Japan for as long as possible,” jumping over 24.7% registered in a similar survey a year ago.
For the first time, they outnumbered those who “want to live in Japan until the situation in Ukraine stabilizes” (33.9%), which had been the most common answer in the foundation’s four previous surveys.
Combining the responses shows that more than two in three Ukrainian evacuees (72.9%) want to become long-term residents in Japan, an increase of 7.4 percentage points on the previous year. Just 1.8% wanted to return home as soon as possible.
The results of the survey can be taken as an indication of their growing recognition that there is no end in sight to the war in their home country.
As of February 29, Japan was home to 2,097 Ukrainian evacuees, according to the Immigration Services Agency of Japan. The survey respondents were among some 2,000 evacuees who have received humanitarian assistance from the foundation, including air tickets to come to Japan and one million yen (about $6,800) per year for living expenses.
The foundation has conducted these surveys five times so far to follow the evacuees’ daily lives in Japan and find out how they feel about living here and what they need.
The survey also showed that less than half (47.2%) were employed. Of those who were not, 56.7% were looking for work. In other words, roughly one-third of Ukrainian evacuees want to work, but have not been able to find a job. In addition, roughly 75% of those who were employed were working part-time.
Asked what kind of support they needed other than financial benefits and daily necessities, job placement services and vocational training (44.7%) topped the list, followed by assistance in making friends with Japanese (34.0%) and Japanese language lessons (29.4%).
Regarding their proficiency in Japanese, considered by many as a key to employment, the number of people unable to speak or understand Japanese fell from around 70% in July 2022 to 31%.
Nonetheless, nearly three-quarters of evacuees struggled with everyday conversations in Japanese, with only 26% saying they were able to carry on a conversation or discuss more difficult topics.
(To be continued)
