Happy new year!
An update on our holiday activities for Ukrainian kids in Vienna. Recommended reading.
Last night I had the pleasure (and it really was a pleasure) to take 45 Ukrainian kids aged between 11 to 15 ice skating to the Friday night “disco” at Vienna’s Eislauf-Verein. We were grateful to have received twenty free entry tickets plus twenty free skate rentals from the rink. We then used “XMAS” donations to Cards for Ukraine (thank you!) to pay for the remaining tickets and 50 Krapfen (traditional Austrian apricot-jam filled donuts). I am super grateful to Vasily who helps moderate our Telegram group and Artem, a fellow volunteer, himself still in school, who both showed up to help manage the arrival of all the kids and the renting of all the skates. It was organized chaos, but in a good way. The only thing I did to somehow manage the group was to give each child a name tag sticker on his/her jacket, so I would know who we were responsible for.
On a crisp Friday evening with finally good weather (clear skies, no rain, no wind), the rink was packed. A DJ table is set up in the middle. Another pleasant surprise was the arrival of Olga and Serhii, a couple from Ukraine who are hobby semi-professional figure skaters. They offered to come help the kids, and it was amazing, as we had a wide range of talents from very beginner to those who comfortably skated onto the ice. All in all, it was a great evening. One thing that surprised me personally was the moms — the moms wanted to stay. I had to ask some of them to buy entry tickets as I had only purchased for the kids. It’s funny, when my kids were that age I was happy for any opportunity to hand them over for a few hours, and in this case, I think the moms enjoyed watching their kids skate as much as the kids enjoyed it. It had been a long time since I had heard so many genuine words of thanks. The icing on the cake was a local TV crew from Wien Heute which came to film our little event, and the report will air tonight at 7pm on ORF 2. I will share the link in a later post. Super grateful they took the time on a Friday evening to come talk with the kids. The journalist told me she was impressed by their German, which is great feedback.
I think last night I remembered that sometimes what really isn’t a lot of “work” (sending an email, a bit of messaging back and forth on my phone, fund-raising), can have a huge impact. The Ukrainian kids all seemed eager to participate even if some arrived shy, not knowing the others. I know this age group can be awkward, and that’s why I picked it. I figured kids aged 16 and up self-organise for the most part.
Just before New Year’s, on December 29 & 30, we hosted another holiday event, this time for younger kids. We invited, each day, twenty kids aged 6 to 10 to participate in gingerbread cookie decorating, ornament making, and a scavenger hunt. I only did the administrative inviting and organising, and Train of Hope kindly let us use their cafeteria for the activity, despite the community center being closed that week. Three volunteers helped me, each doing one activity with the kids. One baked over 400 cookies and prepared icing and sprinkles for the kids to decorate with, another helped the kids make tree ornaments with string and glue and sparkles, and a third did a scavenger hunt with the kids which ended with them receiving little gifts of chocolates and writing a letter to Santa (most Ukrainian kids still receive presents for New Year’s). With this age group, I was super happy that many moms stayed and helped us along the way. The kids were adorable, very eager, very excited, happy for the opportunity to meet others and be creative.
A really special thanks to our cookie-masterclass hostess who did this last Christmas too, also over two different days, also financing and baking and preparing all the supplies herself. She does this as a volunteer on top of her very demanding professional day-job, and being a cat mommy to two sweet kitties adopted from Ukraine. Incredible. The kids absolutely loved it. I loved seeing them squeezing the icing directly into their mouths from the pipping bags and doing other little kid things. Some were so creative — one boy built a tower of cookies using toothpicks. Another mixed red and green to make a grey-like icing. The attention to detail and their use of the sprinkles to paint pictures was really something. I was amazed at their concentration despite their young ages, how long they were able to sit still and focus for. It was really wonderful to see.
We have one more activity coming up, and that is another ice skate, this time on a Sunday morning at the Wiener Eistraum when it opens up again with the bigger rink in late January. We received 20 free tickets from the city of Vienna, and have invited as many kids to skate. They were not able to help us with the rental costs, so we will subsidise that from Cards for Ukraine. For this event I have asked a Ukrainian mom of three to help me. I am learning to ask for help of other volunteers where I need it. These bigger events are impossible to host alone.
In other news, I was quoted this week in an opinion piece published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper, talking about Austria’s handling of the nearly 80,000 Ukrainians who have now sought temporary protection here. On my mind at the moment are several concerns. First and perhaps foremost, as I read the horrific news out of Ukraine (intensified targeting of cities like Kharkiv and Kyiv), I know this will translate into more Ukrainians arriving in Europe, and I see that Austria is not prepared for a new influx of refugees asking for housing from the state. Second, the existing program for refugees does not provide a standard of living enough to buy even basic food and medicine. On top of that, the authorities have recently started to tighten the belt even further (deducting, for example, the tiny amount Ukrainian pensioners receive as pensions in Ukraine from their payouts in Austria), and refugees who live in housing provided by the state cannot work full time without fear of losing those tiny benefits and their housing. It is a viscous circle very hard to break out of. Countries like France and Germany pay nearly double. Austria’s message is fairly clear: do not come if you cannot afford an independent life. But what about those already here? This means we are still, unfortunately, and quite unfathomably, really, still reliving €50 supermarket gift cards to those in need. We received some generous donations over the holidays, and I am in the process of distributing them. I am prioritising pensioners and mothers with kids. I feel this is fair. To focus on those who cannot work due to circumstances out of their control (old age, illness, small children).
I have also been invited later this week to speak on a podcast about Austria’s handling of Ukrainians here and long term perspectives. One of the topics I will try to highlight is the looming big question of their long-term legal status in the EU. As the war drags on, if initially most families would have said they will go back to Ukraine as soon as they can, now I imagine most families would say they would like to stay in Austria, if possible. One cannot stop the marching of time, and time changes perspectives. People find jobs, kids get used to school in a new language, and this new strange life slowly becomes your new normal. Except, at the moment, the EU has only offered Ukrainians temporary protection through March 2025, and no one knows what will happen after that.
In Ukraine, in addition to the horrible increased attacks by Russia on civilian targets, there is an uproar over the new draft bill on mobilisation. The bill proposes banning men from transacting with property (housing, cars) or renewing state IDs if they cannot produce a paper saying they registered with the draft office. This has caused a panic of Ukrainians who are already outside of the country, trying to renew their passports now before this is voted on, perhaps as soon as later this week. In addition, many men are rushing to sign property they own over to their wives or female relatives, before the law is passed. Men with the legal right to leave Ukraine, such as fathers of three or handicapped men, have reported no longer being able to cross the border after 8pm on December 29. I spoke with one mother at our holiday party. Her husband is in the army, although not on the front lines. He is a drone operator near the Belarusian border. She shrugged “they don’t have any men”. As if to say, well, the army has to get people from somewhere. You can all imagine how this rubs ordinary Ukrainians knowing full well that the elite have gotten their kids out of the country, while most men are now locked in. It rubs about as well as the flaunting of wealth abroad by wealthy Ukrainians. No one of course knows if they are donating to the army or humanitarian causes or not, but the continuation of a certain lifestyle during wartime rubs outside observers and ordinary Ukrainians the wrong way. As it should, frankly.
In short — it’s complicated.
In non-Ukraine news, I would like to really recommend this piece by The Economist about the U.S. presidential election in 2024. I still cannot get my head around the simple math of a country of 300+ million not being able to nominate normal-aged people to run for president. If we believe democracy can only be saved by one old man, then we have a truly much bigger problem than who will be the next president.
Joe Biden’s chances do not look good. The Democrats have no plan B
That’s it for now. Thank you so much for your continued interest, and happy new year 2024! I will try to be more regular about writing here now that the holiday break is nearly over…