Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. (Day 69)
Talking in circles about the same issues until I lose my voice (or my fingers) hoping to draw attention to a major crisis in the making.
Some formatting issues tonight. Can’t seem to post my own photos. It doesn’t work on two different browsers so I am going to assume the problem is with Substack and not me, although it’s a shame because I don’t know what will print now. I wanted to use this photo of the stamps which represents the grocery store cards I receive in the mail each day from generous Austrians. Thank you. All of these cards were promptly re-stuffed into pre-addressed envelopes to Ukrainian women now living in Austria.
Today was another blur, and even though by some miracle all three of my kids are away on school trips tonight, I am so tired. Very briefly. I think I stuffed around 70 envelopes today. Which is incredible. Because 70 times €50 is €3,500 worth of groceries. In one day. Amazing. Thank you for all of your donations. I am now well “filled up” and working off the backlog of requests from grocery cards.
I am trying to reach new groups of Ukrainians in need. My priorities remain outside of Vienna (simply because more charity resources exist here in Vienna), families with children, pensioners who cannot get jobs. I keep receiving messages of gratitude. They are wonderful. I keep hearing messages from families who haven’t received any social payments yet from the Austrian government. Those are heartbreaking.
And then there are little miracles, like this one, this afternoon:
Part 1:
Part 2:
And this all happened within 30 minutes. Some texting back and forth by yours truly, and a wildly generous gesture by a person living in Austria who wanted to help Natalia directly.
Yura came back looking for me today. He wants to go home. No questions asked, we helped him get a ticket on the direct train. He is living in a dormitory here and is miserable. Another executive decision I have zero regrets about.
Odesa was front and center today. One explanation I heard just now about why we are seeing fewer Ukrainians at the train station in the past few days is they have started to drive buses directly from Ukraine (I assume, via Hungary or Slovakia) to the welcome center run by Train of Hope at Stadion. Therefore, we simply don’t see all the Ukrainians arriving via the train station.
This also happened today.
We helped plug a little hole but we cannot repair the roof.
I am doing a TV interview tomorrow and I absolutely loathe cameras but I want to say my message over and over until someone big, someone with the power to change things, is pressured into doing just that. This is making me very angry. I keep getting the same messages over and over.
I say it every day like a stuck record, but this is a state failure. They payments of €215 per adult and €100 per chid per month (when they are paid! as we know many still have not received anything!) are insufficient and unrealistic and we will very soon have a full-blown humanitarian crisis on our hands of Ukrainian women, children, and pensioners who do not have enough money to buy groceries. Right here in Austria. Among us. The easiest, most efficient solution would be a one-time bridge payment of several hundred Euros to every Ukrainian who opened an Erste Bank account and asked for social benefits. The government has the data. Even if it failed to digitalize it. It knows.
One must-read for you today. By the one and only Elena Kostyuchenko, in English.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for filling up the piggy bank so promptly! I’m working as fast as I can to reach as many Ukrainian families as possible in Austria as soon as possible. I understand the urgency.
p.s. Sorry about the formatting but please click on this for Cookie. I just can’t. His ribbons!