The Polyachenkos Offer Ways to Support Ukraine

Family update

My parents and Julia’s mom are home now, yet the situation is worrying. My dad tries to keep his car full of gas, which is not always possible due to the gas shortages, and we are monitoring the situation to the best of our abilities. My brother is staying in Ternopil with his in-laws for now as the situation remains explosive. My sister-in-law actually got her application to come to Canada approved and she sent her passport today to the Visa Application Center in Helsinki to stick the visa to her passport. We are looking forward to welcoming her here. Her mom also applied and got approved, but I am not sure if she wants to come. Our parents decided to stay in Ukraine for now.

Ways to Help

Prayer

Please continue to pray, each day, for peace to come to Ukraine and God’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” for every nation.

Housing

We have several places lined up to house immigrants from Ukraine, including three from people from our congregation. But we need more! Here is the form to be sent to those who are interested.

We are in need of safe and decent accommodation for the Ukrainian people to stay for the period between 2 and 12 months and we expect that those would be offered at no cost. Of course, we are budgeting to offset some utility bills, especially during the winter months. But for the rest of it, we believe that we can find enough people who have the heart and the ability to provide a gift of housing.

Financial gifts

We are looking to bring 15-18 families to Fredericton and our rough estimate shows that we need approximately $10,000/family to cover all associated costs. Every situation is different and different families require different levels of support, but $10K is the number on average. As of today, we have raised about $17K — including a $10K donation from Journey Church.

Julia and I are learning from Pastor Scott to trust in God that he will provide (that guy keeps saying we shouldn't worry at all, our Lord has the plan😎), but as a trained economist I am little worried. We are working hard to raise funds for that cause and if our Church family could step in and provide a little help, it would be great.

(Designate your gift, “Local Ukraine Support” and we’ll get the gifts to this local fund.)

Volunteers

This is the biggest one! We have several directions where the help of volunteers is needed.

The first group focuses on immigration professionals. Quite a large share of people that we are working with require some degree of immigration assistance (filing applications, paperwork etc.). So, if we have people with that type of talent who are willing to help, they would be an enormous help.

The second group is people with a vehicle. Most of our families either have no driver's license and/or will not be able to afford to buy a vehicle right away. So, they will need friends! Volunteers in this group will also become the first Canadian friends to these families.

The third group is people who have organizational talents and could help with organizing fundraisers. We already have a small group of like-minded Ukrainians, but we need more! We will be willing to cooperate and bring Ukrainians on board to give it Ukrainian 'flavor', but we could definitely use some help organizing fundraisers.

The fourth group we call friends. These are the people who provide their friendship: i.e. taking them out for a ride, inviting them to their homes for a meal, you name it! Honestly, this is the most exciting group I believe 😊.

The fifth group is childcare. Not sure how exactly this is going to work, but most of our families are moms with small kids and they will not be able to afford traditional childcare. So maybe we could come up with some ideas and a group of volunteers who would be willing and able to look after kids from time to time while moms are at interviews, appointments, etc.

Another opportunity

We expect that we will need to go and pick up most of our families from the airport in Halifax. Although I have a 7-seater van, it will need quite a bit of prayer for going there and coming back without breaking up somewhere in between 😂. So maybe someone would loan such a vehicle to us or come along.