Help refugees: housing them in dormitories

The eight years’ Russia-Ukraine war caused many humanitarian problems for our country and for the whole world. One of the most painful is refugees. Escaping from massive bombing, rocket artillery shelling and the threat of enslavement by the occupiers, people are leaving their homes in the areas of active hostilities. They are seeking refuge in the relatively peaceful areas of Ukraine.  They often come without any money, necessary clothes and documents, in the hope that people will understand, support and help them.PUET couldn’t stand aside from the problems of these people. Back in 2014, we sheltered dozens of teachers and students of universities, located on the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Some of these teachers is still working at our university. The Foreign Languages Faculty and the Institute of Culture and Arts of Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University have been working in the academic building and dormitories since 2015 (about 56 teachers and 300 students). All these years we have been creating the necessary working, studying and living conditions for them. PUET became native for hundreds and hundreds of students and graduates of Luhansk National University. We have never thought that in seven years we would prepare rooms for the settlement of our Luhansk colleagues again, this time from Starobilsk, where the administration of Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University was located. Therefore, the members of administration have been in PUET since February 25, there are more than 70 teachers and students, who became the internally displaced people. After the month of Russia’s large-scale aggression, more than 2000 refugees from Donbass, Kharkiv and Sumy regions have been temporarily housed in university dormitories. The vast majority of them stayed with us only for 2-3 days. Coped with the grief and stress of losing home and even entire cities where they once lived, they moved further to the West. However, some of them, feeling our concern and not having the opportunity to find the place to live by themselves, are staying in the dormitories of PUET, 220 refugees remained there. All of them are provided with all the necessary supplies, hygiene items, heat and light, hot and cold water. Volunteers are providing all the necessary assistance regarding food and clothing for these people. In order to support the refugees, the university is providing them with hot lunches, had opened a humanitarian aid station at the sports complex and set up bomb shelters. But that’s another story for another time.