The Nippon Foundation to Double the Number of Ukrainian Evacuees It Supports to 2,000 (3)
At the press conference on July 29 to announce The Nippon Foundation’s decision to double the number of Ukrainian evacuees it supports, we were joined Ukrainian evacuees who fled to Japan.
When Ms. Nataliia Muliavka came to Japan on March 26 with her 6- and 3-year-old daughters, she said: “I was initially very confused. The environment was different, I could not speak the language, and I didn’t know anyone.”
They are now living with her aunt in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, and are hoping to find a place of their own in public housing nearby.
“We’ve just moved here from Ukraine, so I don’t want them (the daughters) to have to change schools again,” Ms. Muliavka said.
So far, they have been unable to find any available public housing units in Yokohama, but with assistance from The Nippon Foundation, she said, “we are thinking about looking for an apartment close to where we are now. I am very thankful to be able to choose a place in an area that we like.”
Ms. Olena Svidran, a guarantor for her mother who evacuated from Ukraine, said: “The language barrier is difficult. For the first month my mother was here, she didn’t leave our house. Lately, I have been asking her little by little to go to the convenience store or supermarket to do shopping for me. It is important for my mother to have a place in society. A long-term stay is completely different from a short-term stay. Not having your own daily rhythm creates stress.”
“She started studying Japanese online a week after arriving. At first, she didn’t like it, but the teacher was very kind and after three months she can read hiragana characters and speak a little Japanese,” she said, adding “The change I have seen in her makes me very happy. I believe that overcoming the Japanese language barrier will be the key.”
At the press conference, The Nippon Foundation also gave progress reports on other projects we have undertaken to support Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian Evacuees Assistance Fund, a fundraising campaign we launched on June 13, has received donations totaling about 129 million yen (about $ 970,000) as of July 29.
In partnership with U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel and Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky, we intend to call on potential donors, including U.S. companies doing business in Japan, for more donations with a view to attaining the target of one billion yen (about $ 7.5 million).
As for the foundation’s assistance for Ukrainians with disabilities, we provided Access Israel, an Israeli NGO, with 290 million yen (about $2.2 million) to support its activities to help Ukrainians with disabilities who had not been able to flee their war-torn homeland.
As of late July, Access Israel helped 809 Ukrainians with disabilities depart the country. They also sent medications, clothes and other daily necessities to 8,626 persons with disabilities who cannot physically leave.
Starting in late May, The Nippon Foundation and The Nippon Foundation Volunteer Center launched a project to dispatch Japanese student volunteers to countries neighboring Ukraine to support displaced Ukrainians through distributing food and drinks, sorting relief supplies, collecting garbage, cleaning facilities and interacting with displaced children.
The first two 15-member groups of student volunteers have returned to Japan after spending two weeks each at a temporary evacuation center in the city of Przemyśl in southeastern Poland on the border with Ukraine.
With the third and fourth groups being sent to Poland in August, the remaining three groups are scheduled to depart between late August and October, bringing the total number of student volunteers to 105.
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