At the weekend, 50 people from Ukraine on their way to Leiria will be accommodated and cared for in Rheine
Rheine. 8650 Euro! That was yesterday at noon the state of the donation account “Friends help friends – fundraiser Ukraine” of our twinning association. For some only a “drop on the hot stone”, but we need further many such “drops”, in order to be able to help directly and unbureaucratically. Therefore, at this point first of all a heartfelt thank you to all donors.
That help is urgently needed, we learned today from our Lithuanian twin city Trakai. Trakai has been twinned with Luzk since 2009. Luzk is a city in the northwesternUkraine. Located on theStyr River, the large city with over 210,000 inhabitants is the center of theVolyn region.
The city’s military hospital is currently providing medical care to numerous civilians and soldiers. As our friends in Trakai informed us, there is a lack of medicines in particular. The financing of the medicines is possible only with help from Rheine, so the message from our twin town.
In the afternoon we transferred 5000 Euro to the city of Trakai by express transfer, so that the aid transport can start quickly.
Also from Leiria, our twin town in Portugal, an emergency call reached us yesterday at noon from Sivia Carreira, responsible in the Leiria city administration for town twinning.
“In Leiria we already have a large community of fellow Ukrainian citizens, and for this reason we are also currently welcoming quite a few refugees who will come to stay with family or friends. The community has taken care of some travel, with a first group arriving today from Hungary. We have set up a welcome center and temporary housing facility in the municipal stadium.
With this first group we are responsible for, it was clear that people needed to rest after getting here, as they are extremely tired and fragile. With the resource for established networks and one of our partner cities in France, we were able to provide them with an overnight stay in Italy and another in France before they came to Leiria.
Now we are facing the same situation with the group from Warsaw, which includes several children, two of whom are only two months old. So once again I ask for the help of friends. Quite direct is the situation:
A bus will leave Leiria today in the late afternoon for Warsaw, making only one obligatory stop. They expect to arrive there in the early hours of Saturday morning. However, since there are mandatory times for the buses to stop, they will have to stop there for nine hours. So, in the worst case scenario, they are expected to leave at around 2pm.
The goal would then be to travel directly to Rheine and stay there Saturday night and leave early again Sunday morning, stopping next in France (Bordeaux);
Since I’m already asking if there could be a hot meal/drink, it would be perfect;
The group will consist of 60 people in total (considering already two drivers, two firefighters/paramedics, one interpreter); In the group there is also a cat and a dog.
The ideal scenario would be for the whole group to stay together in one place like a pavilion or something. Due to the large number of people, if split between different facilities, please ideally only have two groups.
From what I can see in the list of names, I would say all adults are women and then only minors. But I will do a more detailed analysis in the meantime.
I am so sorry to give you all here in Rheine this extra work, but in hard times we remember first the friends we know we can count on.
Thank you in advance for anything you can possibly do.”
The board of the Rheine Town Twinning Association would like to respond to this request as well and is preparing to provide overnight accommodation and meals for the people from Ukraine.
Donations are requested to the municipal account no. IBAN DE 65 4035 0005 0000 0642 53 at Stadtsparkasse Rheine. Keyword: “Donation campaign Ukraine”.
Donation receipts will be issued upon request.