My waiting list is 25 and counting. I am going to start putting women forward and men back. Exception: handicapped, elderly. It’s interesting it used to be only women & kids, then many pensioners. Now it’s everything. You have to be fair but that also requires judgement calls.
When demand exceeds supply and I never know when the next card is coming. Some aid organizations only help women with kids. Those in villages usually have less access to help than cities. So you shuffle envelopes a bit. Not a science. To donate pls DM or paypal.com/paypalme/groce…
My small wait list are only those who texted me directly. @badlogicgames has a huge wait list from our website. You’ll see from the data we have already helped a sizable percentage of Ukrainian families in Austria (~50k+ in total from latest data I saw).
Every Ukrainian who writes me gets added to a private Telegram group by invite link where I try to answer FAQs and really encourage them to help each other. Nearly 2.2k in the group, geographically all over Austria. I think it’s become a valuable resource, for mental health too.
Also Vassily (volunteer admin of my group) & his mom have still not found a room to rent in Wien 😞
A year ago today I landed in Kyiv for the first time. I fell in love from the first minute. Mesmerized. Today, it feels like a decade ago. I am also having the most bonkers day ever. 🧵 to come. Sometimes it’s hard to believe what life throws at you.
The morning starts with me planning to ask a quick question at the bank and then buy 8 Hofer cards, 1 of which I must deliver to an elderly woman at the arrivals center who does not have a smartphone. She is waiting for me at 11am and I have no way to tell her I may be late.
The bank takes forever. School holidays so no staff. The Viennese pensioners are freaking out over the long wait. I take my chances and wait it out: 45 minutes. Mad dash to the nearest Hofer, I buy 8 cards but no time to post them. I rush to arrivals center. 10 min to spare.
It's not scandalous an infamous FPÖ politician made an openly xenophobic comment on TV to Viennese teens.
It's not scandalous ÖVP will send a nearly all male line-up to NÖ parliament.
It's not scandalous Russia could easily bribe some Austrian MPs.
All sadly very on brand.
Live a few days here as a woman who speaks German with an accent and has been helping some of the most vulnerable people navigate "the system" for nearly a year and NONE of this surprises you. People who vote for both parties know it and still keep voting. Private sector -- same.
I read this piece about Raiffeisen in Russia and thought good at least someone is finally reporting what we already know but should be talked about: creation of "shareholder value" vs having a moral backbone and being part of a war-mongering economy.
This is so beautifully written and contains layers of nuance I have totally failed to convey (I didn’t even attempt) in my retelling of my exchanges with Ukrainian refugees.
The $50 per person per month is true and it is the only official support for IDPs. There are tensions between Russian-speaking Ukrainians who sought safety in western Ukraine and felt ripped off by locals. There are heated arguments even online about which language to speak.
I’ve met many families from Donbas who were refugees in 2014 didn’t feel like they got a warm welcome in Kyiv and other cities back then and now it’s deja vu but in Europe. Ukraine is a huge country and yes: it’s complicated.
I’m scared to jinx it but I smell tiny baby steps of progress here as the state begins to realize many Ukrainians are here for a while. They are not prepared to blow up their broken system, but they seem prepared to s l o w l y make some tweaks. Namely:
They will remove the additional step of employers having to ask AMS permission to hire Ukrainians (hopefully this will be passed into law by spring). This would mean full equal access to the labor market for those not asking for social payments.
For those living in free housing and/or receiving rent subsidy and social payments, there will be a new calculation as to how much they can earn legally & how much of those benefits they can keep. It’s complicated & not fixed yet. It should in theory make more paid work possible.