WISEs are with Ukrainian people

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, ENSIE members and their members have been very active to support Ukrainians refugees in Europe. On this page you will for each country a list of actions led by WISEs, the support that the WISEs are receiving from their public authorities and the type of additional support requested by the WISEs.

ENSIE prepared along with RREUSE a position on WISEs and Ukraine, that you can find here. 

ADV Romania:

Starting from April 2023, the "Alături de Voi" Foundation implements two projects that support Ukrainian refugees and that can make a significant difference in their lives:

• The "Community Center for Children and Families from Ukraine" project, implemented together with the Bethany Social Services Foundation (partnership leader) and with the financial support of Active Citizens Fund Romania, a program financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants 2014-2021, comes in support of beneficiaries to respond to the need for assistance and support in making informed decisions, the need for access to services and support to ensure their integration into the labor market.

• With the support of NESsT, implement an integrated labor placement program for refugees that will focus on identifying and developing their skills through an integrated package of specialized professional integration services (vocational testing, training, job-coaching).

Also, ADV Romania aims to employ refugees from Ukraine in its own social economy structures and offers consultancy and mentoring for organizations that work with refugees, to open social enterprises in which to employ refugees or to support them to become entrepreneurs in Romania.

We strongly believe that together, we can help change the lives of these people and provide real and lasting support.

AFF

The Ateliere Fără Frontiere Association is among the organizations that opened its doors for the employment of refugees from Ukraine since March 2022, and they currently offer employment services through the workplaces in their workshops, counseling sessions and vocational guidance, but also information and mediation services on the labor market.

In the project ”Support to self- reliance of vulnerable refugees from Ukraine” that they develop with help from UNHCR, they succeed to:

• organize 458 initial counseling discussions were organized until now in the project
• organize 141 counseling sessions at the Ateliere Fără Frontiere offices where they identified the skills of the Ukrainian refugees and checked the availability for different types of jobs proper for them
• to accompany 55 beneficiaries to interviews
• to find jobs for 45 beneficiaries
• to enroll 190 people to Romanian language courses

Social enterprises in Slovakia want to prepare an information campaign for Ukrainian citizens on employment opportunities in social enterprises and the benefits to employ Ukrainian citizens.

Support from public authorities

In general Ukrainians refugees arriving in Slovakia are given resident status (they are entitled to free healthcare, children can go to school and kindergartens), they can enter the labour market without further permission. Everyone should look for a job themselves and the employers don’t need more paperwork, however, the new job must be notified by the employer within seven days to the employment office. A Ukrainian citizen - refugee is entitled to a material benefit emergency - the adult receives 68.80 euros per month from the employment office, if has one or at most four children - 130.90 euros.

In Slovakia, there are gaps in the establishment and operation of systematic steps in prompt assistance and subsequent assistance for integration and adaptation. Multiple shortcomings of the crisis management authorities are covered by volunteers, NGOs, entrepreneurs and social enterprises. Ministry of Labour declared the support to the Social Economy as a priority but there is very little communication and cooperation with the Ministry.

Actions led by ENSIE's member, SWR and its members

As for support for war refugees from Ukraine, in the last months of 2022, SWR managed to support the creation of 38 jobs for them with the help of around EUR 400,000 from our OWES SWR project.
New jobs were created in several social enterprises in our region, i.e. the Silesian Voivodeship in Poland. One of this activities was the creation of 5 jobs for Ukrainian women in the Film Incubator in Katowice, which is a social enterprise. Please see the link to the video https://fb.watch/lysDpPoZOY/ about it.

In this first period, Galileo established direct contact with its Ukrainian partners, based in Budapest or in Ukraine. Galileo offered support for people in transit to rest for a night and sleep in the office. They bought several sleeping bags, and provided them to refugees on the border trough local associations (Budapest Bike Maffia and Migration Aid) which organized special missions, in support of the local municipalities to provide first accommodation for refugees. Galileo staff supported logistics for people in transit in Budapest during their travel to other countries. Galileo’s members made their holiday house available for refugees, a group of African young people before and actually a Ukrainian family with 3 small children. Galileo also shared information about work opportunities, possibility to volunteer, research of means of transportation etc. via social media. Indeed as there are civil organizations very active, and it’s important to share the information. Several refugees already founded a work in Hungary, both people without qualification (Hungarian work market is in need of workers), and qualified people as IT, language teachers. There’s a sad exception, regarding Hungarian minority living in Ukraine (around 180.000 persons), mostly Roma, with double citizenship, which are hardly discriminated. 

Support from public authorities

Currently, the government is looking to accelerate the procedure to recognize Ukrainian degrees, especially in the health sector, as this could be useful for the country, considering the lack of health care workers.

Several multinational companies already started campaign to enroll Ukrainian workers.

• Supporting incoming Ukrainian pregnant women by giving them "Maternity Baskets" - hygiene and cleanliness kits for the woman and the newborn needed at the maternity home.
• Temporarily housed refugees from Ukraine at personal home
• Accommodated two families (a mother with two children and a young girl) in their institution, and looking to accommodate two more single people.

Support from public authorities

Overall, there is no support. It is a volunteer action of solidarity and civil activism regardless support from authority support. If there will be additional support from the local authorities, actions could reach bigger impact. Some of them applied for support but no information yet.

Type of additional support needed:

Need for financial support to involve more support as well as publicity.

• Social enterprise Bistro Čistá duše FOVY sro prepares every day free meals for refugees.  They furnish foodbanks with food and hygiene products.
• Social enterprise FOVY offered 7 jobs to Ukrainian women in Havlíčkův Brod and Chotěboř : cleaning, sewing and assembling.
• In Moravia,  Valašská Diakonická  cooperated with the city of Valašské Meziříčí, to host 60 refugees. And provided clothes to Ukrainian child through the social enterprise  Pralinky s příběh.

Support from public authorities

Very little support of public authorities and nothing specific for social enterprises, MoLSA is not preparing anything specific targeting the current situation. However, there is some financial support available at the moment in the Czech Republic, even though there is no more public authorities support to organisations that take care of migrants:

• Ministry of interior gives money to migrant organisations for integration
• MoLSA gives out for establishing child groups
• there is Visegrad fund: https://www.visegradfund.org/news/visegrad-4-ukraine/
• some foundations (corporate or non-profit) provide quick money for child/youth programmes and other support

Type of additional support needed:

TESSEA is calling for :  

• fund for translators into/from Ukrainian - Czech Republic is the 2nd most affected after Poland in terms of the ratio of migrants per inhabitant
• fund for psycho-social support - therapists and social workers are badly needed, especially those with the expertise on post-war trauma
• specific support of social enterprises for creating jobs for Ukrainians
• support for educational programmes for Ukrainians
• generally more means for the migrant organisation that provide long term complex support and are good at intercultural work (the best prevention of racism and hatred which we already can observe in our country :-(
• in general our government (right-centrist) is rather "mean" and leaves many things on people, volunteer and NGO help
• TESSEA has, however, recommended to include Ukrainians as target group for the ESF+ calls for proposals that are being prepared for the autumn this year. 

Actions led by ENSIE's members and their members

ABZ*AUSTRIA (member of arbeit plus (arbeit plus is member of ENSIE)) is currently running the ABZ*BBE #UKR.WORKINAUSTRIA: Our project support people from Ukraine (with the existing ID card for displaced persons) in finding a suitable job, in career planning and integration in Austria.

Our services include personal and confidential counseling with multilingual advisers, assistance with career orientation and future prospects, recording of professional skills and qualifications and give support in preparing application documents in German. We provide assistance in accessing the Austrian labor market and support with job offers, internships, and/or job trainings.

We focus on rapid integration into appropriate training or education programs and offer free workshops, regular information days and open space days.

In addition, the following objectives apply, which vary individually in detail:

•             Support in all matters relating to job applications and career orientation or placement support.

•             Stabilization and activation in the current life situation, strengthening and empowerment.

•             Development of compatibility solutions and childcare.

•             Support for individual problems housing, school, and German courses.

•             Learning about and deepening possibilities for health promotion for maintaining employability – our focus is on organizations that help to deal with the trauma caused by war and escape.

Support from public authorities

ABZ*BBE #UKR.WORKINAUSTRIA is supported by the Public Employment Service Austria (AMS). To make our support more effective, we'd need good coordination between stakeholders, clear mandates, avoidance of redundancy and clear responsibilities from public authorities.

Link: https://www.abzaustria.at/de/projekte-abz-austria/ukr-work-in-austria

Support from public authorities

The government launched a dispositive of temporary protection for Ukrainian’s refugee so they can enter more quickly on the labour market.

There is a strong mobilisation from authorities on this topic to find solutions about technical points. The actions led by la fédération des enterprises d'insertion are supported, at least morally, by public authorities. 

Type of additional support needed:

It will be necessary to find a solution concernin the traiing for funding and the question of the language. 

• Provide refugees (through coupons) or municipalities with clothes, household items or furnitures from second hand shops: Kringwinkel Midwest, Kringwinkel Maasland, De Biehal , Stroom vzw, Kringwinkel Hageland , La friperie Deltagroep, Kringwinkel Kust , Kringwinkel ViTeSCollect goods : Kringwinkel 't rad, Kringwinkel Den Azalee 
• Provided food for 60 Ukrainians refugees De Vlaspit 
• Organised event to collect money for Ukrainians: Sobo 
• Donated blankets for Ukraine:  Kringwinkel ViTeS

Furthermore, they all collect donations of materials.

Support from public authorities

All the activities have been done with the support of the municipalities.

Idee in Rete promoted the #stopthewar caravan Stop the war now - Nonviolent Peace Action in Ukraine.

As a formal network of social cooperatives belonging to Confcooperative Federsolidarietà, at the level of governmental interlocutors, Idee in Rete is participating in the organisation and planning committees for the reception of Ukrainian refugees. In this operational context, Idee in Rete social co-operatives are reorganising their structures to favour the reception of migrants and are participating at a local level in the infrastructure of a widespread reception system. In particular, the organisations of our Universal Civil Service network, where possible, are reorganising their ordinary activities, where volunteer workers are currently engaged, in order to provide relief and assistance to the Ukrainian population, in full implementation of the principle of solidarity.

Support from public authorities

Currently, the public authorities are focusing on welcoming migrants. However, according to Idee in Rete, they are repeating errors of approach that have already occurred in the management of past crisis. For example, the Italian government is paying hotels to house Ukrainian refugees, even though their cost per person is almost three times higher than in third sector organisations. And they don’t take into account the fact that these organisations, in contrast to hotels, are also responsible for taking care of people and not only for providing food and accommodation.

Type of additional support needed:

The support of public authorities is necessary to make the reception of Ukrainian refugees more effective. It should consist in legislative, economic and financial planning that looks beyond the emergency of the moment. These policies should focus on the social inclusion of migrants, to encourage processes and itineraries and active citizenship. An inclusion policy concretely oriented in this sense and is not only a public declaration would participate to the reduction the phenomena of xenophobia, intolerance and social exclusion that, once the emotional wave of the moment has passed, will come back to powerfully appear.

The Suspertu SL integration company in the Basque country (Spain), which runs accommodation and catering services, has carried out 2 types of activity with Ukrainian refugees:

1- Recruitment of 2 Ukrainian asylum seekers in 2021. For the moment, they have not hired anyone and no future hiring is planned.

2- Hosting Ukrainian asylum seekers in their accommodation services, via an agreement with CEAR: a total of 9 people ("CREAR": Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid. https://www.cear.es/ They are the ones who collaborated with the government to organize the reception and assistance of displaced Ukrainians.