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After the emergency reception upon their arrival in France, the time has come to find more permanent accommodation solutions for the Ukrainian refugees. In the heart of Poitou, several families have been welcomed in a village of chalets and a chain of solidarity has been set up. #TheyHaveTheSolution
Fifty days after the start of the Russian invasion, 4.7 million Ukrainians have fled their war-torn country according to the latest figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. More than 45,000 passed through France, some only a few days before joining another European country, and they would be today, according to the Ministry of the Interior, nearly 26,000 to have remained here. Refugees, mostly women, children and adolescents, welcomed in an emergency, and for whom it is now necessary to find more permanent accommodation. Near Civray, in Haute-Vienne, the chalets of a campsite have been requisitioned to accommodate several families.
Twenty-eight people now live here, far from the bombs, in the calm of the Poitou countryside. And a chain of solidarity has been set up, as with the volunteers of the civraisien food collective, who take turns daily to deliver food to them. Another association, mandated by the prefecture, helps them and accompanies them with all the administrative procedures, as explained by Nadine Neaux, social worker: “How to open an account, have a social security number, a residence permit, things that give them rights“.
A touching mobilization for the refugees, who can finally breathe a little and try to envisage the future more calmly, even if all here keep the hope of returning soon to Ukraine. Like Olga Mazniak and her family who fled Kharkiv, one of the cities worst hit by Russian bombing: “We really want to go back to Ukraine, when there is no more danger, but we don’t know how long it will take, how long the war will last…“