Page 14 - City Life Magazine - Summer Edition 2023

14 Issue 63 • July 2023

HOMES FOR UKRAINE

Worcester makes a difference

for Ukrainian families

Less than 18 months since the Homes for Ukraine scheme began,

Worcester has welcomed 218 Ukrainian guests fleeing the war,
including 59 schoolchildren.

Seventeen Ukrainian households
have now moved into their own
independent accommodation, with a
further 48 households expected to do
so shortly.

Among those families who have
settled in Worcester are husband
and wife Alex and Valentina, who
left Mariupol together with their two
children and their grandmother when
the Russian invasion began.

Valentina said: “When the war broke
out it was 24 February. We lost
electricity on that day and Mariupol
was the first city to be bombed. The
only food we had was what we had
bought on that day.”
Alex, Valentina and their family are pictured with former Mayor of Worcester Cllr Adrian
CONSTANT BOMBING Gregson in the Mayor’s Parlour
For the first few days the family On 5 March they decided to try to started to leave the city, but soldiers
managed to sleep at night, as the head to Poland. would not let us through and we could
bombing only took place in the day, not go back, so for ten days we stayed
but by 2 March the city was under Alex said: “A friend was transferring in the cellar of a university building.
constant bombing day and night. A his family to Poland and he had spaces There were lots of people in the
small cellar in their home was their for us so we left, taking nothing with cellar and very little room. There was
only refuge, but it was tiny and with us except what we were wearing and nowhere to sleep, just chairs to sit in.”
mum, dad, grandmother and two a couple of extra warm items. We
children, it was standing room only. packed ourselves into the cars and The family had one blanket, which
they gave to their two children, putting
two chairs together to make them a
makeshift bed.

They had scarcely any food and
limited water. There was no gas or
electricity, so they would take the
glass out of windows and make a
fire with the wood. They would cook
buckwheat porridge, enough for
two spoonfuls per person per day.
Even getting water was a dangerous
mission, for it meant someone going
out to a garden and they had to go
out under the constant bombing.

LONG JOURNEY
When the building next door was hit,
they decided to leave and travelled
The family on a day out through Russia.

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