Friends of Ukraine - our collaboration with The British International School in Warsaw - AN UPDATE

Dear Stephanie,

I thought I would give you an update on how things are here.

We have used the first of our donations to purchase vouchers which we will give to the refugee families that we are helping to support through our Saturday Community Support Club. 

We will receive the first batch of vouchers in School this week.

As you know, as part of our Friends of Ukraine and Refugee project, we have started opening our school facilities for the new ‘Saturday Community Support Club’ I’ve attached photographs from our last 2 get togethers.

We like to provide a relaxed atmosphere for our guests, with tea, coffee and refreshments in the morning and a hot meal at lunchtime.  What a wonderful success it has been!!  Many of our IB and secondary students, along with some teachers and PTA members willingly volunteered.  Bringing in a fabulous array of home baking and fresh fruit to add to the snacks available.

Our Ukrainian families have enjoyed being able to connect with each other.  The food and toiletry donations have been very well received and we will continue to provide this along with the vouchers for the foreseeable weeks.

The children have really enjoyed meeting other children and playing together on the many fun activities available and burning off lots of energy in the gymnasium and outdoor play.  Our outdoor community garden proved to be a huge success, with the weather improving, they helped to plant some seeds, including peas, beetroot, radish and lettuce.  The look of surprise and wonderment on the faces of the mothers and children when they met and helped feed our very friendly and well trained free-range hens was just heartwarming.  A couple of the parents confided in me afterwards that this was the first time since they had to flee Ukraine that they had seen their children laugh and smile.

We were also delighted and surprised with impromptu piano performances, one of our guests was a Jaz pianists who’s eyes lit up when he saw the piano and happily entertained us all.  Another retired music teacher from Ukraine took over and said how wonderful it was for her to be able to play the piano again, something she hasn’t been able to do since leaving Ukraine.  We even had a young girl shyly join one of our IB students on the piano and very ably played some lovely songs too.

Kindest Regards,

KEVIN HALPIN

COMMUNITY SERVICE OFFICER