Since 11 March, HEKS/EPER has been carrying out a range of emergency aid activities through a humanitarian team stationed in Odessa. The aim is to provide people in the embattled cities in the south and east of Ukraine with essentials such as food, water, emergency packages, and medicines.
In the cities of Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, HEKS/EPER is providing some 1000 households with support in the form of cash. The beneficiaries are families who have been particularly badly affected by the conflict, whose homes have been destroyed, or whose family members have been injured.
Besides, HEKS/EPER has set up internal supply lines that involve purchasing food items such as potatoes, tomatoes or grain from farmers in Odessa, and sending them by rail to cities in the east and south of the country most impacted by the war. These include the city of Kharkiv, under relentless fire for weeks on end, where thousands of people have taken refuge in air-raid shelters and subway stations, and have been entirely dependent on outside emergency aid. Each day, HEKS/EPER now provides more than 3,300 people in hard-to-reach areas in the north and east of the city with warm meals, which it prepares in a main kitchen in the city centre.