DACHSER and terre des hommes support families in Ukraine
In August 2022, the long-standing partners will launch a joint project in the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv, and Uzhhorod. The project is providing children, teenagers, and their families with therapeutic help to work through the trauma inflicted by the war.
The war in Ukraine has been raging for more than four months now. Some 15 million people have had to abandon their homes and flee from the eastern and southern parts of the country. More than 8 million people are currently living as internally displaced persons in other parts of Ukraine.
Many families have been torn apart by the events of the war and attempts to flee from it. As a result, children and teenagers are having to cope not only with an entirely new environment, but also with the absence or even death of their parents and other caregivers. With no end in sight to this extreme situation, Ukraine cannot provide low-threshold psychosocial or therapeutic treatment options. These are urgently needed to help children and teenagers process their experiences of violence and trauma, and achieve stability within their new situation.
To ease this situation, DACHSER and terre des hommes will begin providing help starting from August 2022 in collaboration with local project partner Vostok-SOS, which has assembled an international team of 20 psychotherapists in Ukraine. The psychosocial therapies are benefitting traumatized children and teenagers, but also their parents and other caregivers, who are receiving special assistance to equip them with the skills they need to cope. The services will be offered throughout the country, but for now the focus is on Dnipro and Kharkiv, as well as the western cities of Lviv and Uzhhorod, which are hosting particularly large numbers of refugees.
Sustainable social commitment
“The war in Ukraine is causing immeasurable human suffering, especially to families that are experiencing violence and being torn apart,” says DACHSER CEO Burkhard Eling. “Our first priority was to ensure that people in Ukraine had a direct supply of goods and food. Now we need to help provide refugee children and teenagers with psychosocial care. As a family-owned company, we now want to make a sustainable, long-term commitment to social causes in Ukraine.”
DACHSER has pledged to donate a total of EUR 160,000 to the project by the end of 2023.
If you would also like to make a personal donation to the DACHSER and terre des hommes aid project, please do so using the following bank transfer details:
IBAN: DE65 2659 0025 1000 7008 04
Reference: DACHSER Ukraine
