A few days ago, this incredible oil painting (and others!) and this incredible teenager, Sonya from Kyiv, now in a commuter town near Vienna, popped into my inbox. As soon as I read “I am 13” after having zoomed in to inspect the art at close range, I replied as politely as I could that I really need to talk with your mom first please. Yesterday, Sonya’s mom and I chatted. Sonya has been pursing her art in a local studio, where some of her paintings have been on sale, to raise money for charities operating in Ukraine. But the studio will now close its doors for summer, and Larysa would like to help Sonya sell her paintings and reach a broader audience. We agreed I would post the two photos I shared on Twitter yesterday, and mom will take care of the rest. The reaction was, as I expected, viral. If you would like to contact Sonya’s mom about her art, please let me know, I will put you in touch.
The last few days I have spent delivering the last cards I had funding for before I take a few weeks off for a summer holiday with my own family. It feels actually terrifying to hit the pause button for a few weeks. I am so worried about what will happen when I am not here. I am worried about the empty envelopes I leave behind. I am worried about all the stories I have heard, what will happen to the people I have met. I know I should not carry this all around with me, but I cannot help it. I don’t know any other way to do it. So I tell myself each day: there are limitations, and you try your best, and that’s it.
I am so grateful to Mario for the website and for taking so much of the card distribution (fundraising, banking, purchases, mailing) work off my shoulders. Thanks to your collective generosity, the website has already raised more than €80,000. Think about how many grocery carts of food that is. It blows your mind. That is roughly a week’s worth of groceries (if you shop carefully) for 1,600 Ukrainian families in Austria. It is huge. And that number doesn’t include the cards I have delivered directly and by post, either cards received from donors in Austria or cards I bought in shops and handed/mailed out using donations I received on PayPal. I have the name of every single Ukrainian recipient written down, I have all the receipts, but I haven’t totalled them all up yet because I am mega superstitious and have this weird fear I might myself be overwhelmed by the information. It feels better to just keep doing it like I am: 5 cards one day, 20 the next, some days no cards, then suddenly a dozen cards. You never know. You are grateful for every single one.
Last night I was texting with a mom of a teenager, originally from Mykolaiv, now stuck in now man’s land in Vienna, a dorm where you cannot register, cannot receive a blue card, cannot receive social payments. Essentially, they cannot do anything in Austria to make their status official and start receiving help until they register at an address, but they live in a place that officially doesn’t exist as a permanent address. It is designed to be only temporary. But they have to stay in Vienna until this important exam for Ukrianian school kids which will be in July or August and they don’t know the date yet. Mom has been reading the news and even asked me about the new child benefit law which Austria’s government passed yesterday, essentially saying all Ukrainian parents with temporary protection status in Austria will be able to apply for child benefit for their children, just like Austrians/EU citizens do. But then I had to say, I am so sorry, but this like everything else will require an address and a bank account to apply via the finance ministry and first you have to figure out your status…in the end I promised somehow someway to give her a supermarket gift card for €50 on Monday before I leave on Tuesday. It is totally symbolic but it is a sign that I heard her and know how hard it is and I know you don’t have any money left and everything is shit but let’s hope someone from the authorities / NGOs will help you and your daughter soon. Thread here.
There is good news too: the small hotel in Lower Austria where the food was not good and not enough, and residents were given unpaid “jobs”, has finally been closed as a refugee housing location, and as of last Thursday every last of the 52 Ukrainians who once lived there has been moved to other housing. I only found this out because one man wrote me, begging for a second Hofer card. Those are the hardest conversations. I have to explain I don’t have any more. I cannot. There are so many families who haven’t even received a first card yet.
Lost my train of thought. I am sitting in the middle of nowhere in Lower Austria for a kids’ golf tournament and Yura just called. Yura is 65 from Kharkiv and calls me a lot. I helped him once buy a ticket back to Ukraine when he was so homesick, he got to Kharkiv, saw how scary it was, slept in his car in the garage rather than in his apartment, out of fear of what might happen overnight, and came quickly back to Austria. Yura lives in a big dorm, but a good one, where he can cook for himself. He likes to go for long walks through Prater in the evenings, the route he described to me must easily be 15-20km. Anyway, with him, it’s always urgent. Urgent is he has a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday and needs a translator. I won’t be here, I give him a phone number of another volunteer who *might* be able to help. She only speaks English, but for a doctor that should be fine. Austria’s doctors all speak excellent English. She is herself a refugee from Mykolaiv. She might even remember Yura. He used to visit me a lot at the train station. He is a hustler. He will figure something out.
This feels like a weird inflection point. Like on the one hand, there is some good news (housing improvements, the child benefit — provided it works in practice, and that in my mind is by no means a done deal), and on the other hand, the messages I receive are growing ever more desperate: money has run out and new money isn’t coming in because the state financial help is insufficient and the labor market is strangulated by bureaucracy (if you ask me, this is by cynical design, to keep jobs for Austrians) and the poorest have no access to the labor market because getting a job would make them homeless so…
I had a very good meeting yesterday with an organization which helps immigrant women who fall into trafficking, abuse, slavery, etc. They reached out to me, knowing I am talking with a lot of Ukrainian women, and that I am somehow seen by many as a person of trust. We had a really good talk, and I immediately shared their Ukrainian and Russian language info in the big Telegram group. These situations are rarely black and white. Imagine you a refugee, and your landlord agrees to give you a steep discount but only in exchange for sexual favours. Imagine you agree to a cash-in-hand job, because you are banned from taking a legal job as you live in a dorm room for free, and then the terms change and you essentially end up working and not getting paid. Who do you turn to? Well, an organization like this. I am so relieved to now know who the professionals are, that if and when I hear such stories, I will be able to put Ukrainian women in touch with the right team of people to help them. I normally skeptical of 99% of NGOs out there, from my lived experience over the past several months, but we had a very good conversation and they were very open about what they can and cannot do, who does and does not help, and it was really nice to meet young women making a real difference, dedicating their professional lives to something that often falls under everyone’s radars.
I am hearing a lot about weddings from the Ukrainians I speak with. Weddings because the groom is in the military. Weddings because if something happens to him a girlfriend doesn’t receive a widow’s pension — only a wife does. Couples who lived together for years but now are suddenly tying the knot. Because no one knows what tomorrow brings.
This is heartbreaking, watch this. A reminder that no matter how much we criticise the response in Europe, there is a reason people are still coming here from Ukraine, because the situation there on the ground continues to be much, much worse.
Do also read this about Ukraine’s grain farmers.
And for something to listen to, I recommend this very well done (and emotional) podcast also by the Post:
I am going to take a break from this too, for a few weeks. I am going to give my family back some of the time I stole from them since February. I hope to be back with new stories and new updates from August. Thanks for your understanding and patience. In the meantime, if you might spread the good word about Cards for Ukraine with family and friends that would be so helpful. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like the immediate financial problems are going to be solved for many Ukrainian families in Austria anytime soon, child benefit or not. I will deliver a few last cards on Monday, provided I have funding. I am currently at -€25. I do this to myself because I think “just one more” and there is always just one more. When you text back and forth with someone you feel just awful not trying to figure out somehow someway to make a card appear faster. If you want to help me make a few last purchases on Monday, link here. Much appreciated.
So that’s it for now. I am going to try to take a vacation. I will of course still check my phone. I will still answer the Ukrainians. I’ll be back soon. Thanks for reading.
Thanks Tanja-- please try to really vacation. Please give the best to your family from me. They are a part of your project too, and deserve to be recognized. Looking forward to catching up in August. Slava Ukraini.