As many as 2,000,000 refugees
have fled Ukraine at this point,
and local nonprofits are stepping in to help.
World Vision has sent workers to Romania,
which is along Ukraine's southern border.
Steven Edwards manages the humanitarian
emergency affairs for World Vision US.
He joins us live this morning with a
look at what local workers are doing.
Stephen good morning to you.
Good morning, thank you for having me.
So what is World Vision doing
right now to assist people who are
fleeing the violence in Ukraine?
Yeah, I think so.
We do have an office in in Romania.
We're currently working in refugee
camps along the border with Romania
and we're also trying to scale up our
response to include other countries where
our goal is to have a multi country
response that would include Ukraine.
First, because we're seeing the greatest
level of needs there in Ukraine of course.
But as well as Moldova,
potentially Poland and potentially Georgia.
So right now we're trying to meet the
most acute basic emergency needs,
so providing emergency assistance items.
To hospitals to refugee camps to
those that have fled the war.
And then we're also at simultaneously
trying to scale up that response to
include more medium term long term
programming to to assist people.
As this conflict drags on and
what are the biggest challenges right
now for World Vision workers as
they're trying to help these refugees?
Right now the biggest challenge
is probably just logistics.
It's it's scaling up out the number of
staff we have on the ground available to
help scaling up the amount of supplies
that we have to be able to provide.
Of course, right now the needs greatly
exceed probably the the assistance
that is available and so our goal
as an organization is to kind of.
Divert resources towards that response,
and so we're now sending
resources towards that area,
both financial and also in in items
to distribute and as well as staffing
resources to try to scale that up to
the point that we can actually meet
the level of need that we're seeing.
And we're
obviously seeing so many pictures and videos.
Just heartbreaking images of people
who are fleeing their war torn region.
What sort of stories are you
hearing from the refugees?
Most people are just expressing
sorrow about the circumstances,
so this is not the type thing that
they ever anticipated happening.
Of course they were, you know,
living normal lives much like like we do
and then war has forced them to flee,
and so it's a lot of shock.
It's a lot of people not
knowing what to do next,
where to where to go next and also
being concerned about family members,
friends that they've left behind
that may still be in conflict zones.
And what's the best way for people?
Here at home to be able to help World Vision.
It's simply the best thing
you can do is donate.
Worldvision.org has many ways to donate.
It's listed there and different
different opportunities,
but essentially,
as I was saying earlier,
we're trying to scale up.
We're trying to increase our resources
in that area and the best way that
you could support us doing that is
by by donating to our organization.
I can assure you that like those donations,
I am responsible for sending
those to the fields I am.
I'm doing that as soon as possible
whenever whenever those are
coming in on a weekly basis.
So that is essentially what.
What can help most at this time?
It's just helping us scale up
our resources so that we're
able to increase the amount of
assistance that we're providing,
and I was gonna ask you that,
can people actually specify that
their money goes to that effort?
Yes to the recruit.
We have a specific donation portal
set up for the Ukrainian response.
The Ukraine crisis response,
and so your funding will be
directed directly to that response,
so it will be going directly
to our field offices,
helping people indeed. Stephen
Edwards with World Vision US.
We thank you so much for your
time this morning and the
work that you're doing there.
Thank you, have a good day
you too and is the humanitarian
crisis continues to grow
more dire every single day.
There are many different
ways that you can help.
You can obviously donate to World Vision,
but there are other organizations
that you can trust as well.
If you want a link to those organizations,
just simply text the word help to
206-448-4545.