UNHCR partners with the Olena Zelenska Foundation to support internally displaced children and large foster families in Ukraine

Kyiv, 30 August 2024:  Yesterday, Karolina Lindholm Billing, UNHCR Representative in Ukraine, met with Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine, to solidify a new partnership aimed at providing crucial humanitarian support to displaced children and larger foster families across Ukraine.

During the meeting, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the Olena Zelenska Foundation, underscoring their commitment to work together in providing essential aid and improving access to social and protection services, including legal assistance and psychosocial support to those in need.

Through this cooperation, UNHCR will provide essential household appliances to be distributed to internally displaced large foster families who have been significantly impacted by the ongoing war.

By providing necessary household appliances, UNHCR, through its collaboration with the Olena Zelenska Foundation, will help these foster families improve the well-being and comfort of displaced children who have already endured so much hardship. These include families who lost their homes as a result of the full-scale invasion and were forced to build their lives from scratch in a new place.

Another important area of cooperation includes the promotion of access to mental health and psychosocial support services for internally displaced people, returnees, and other war-affected individuals. This is aimed at addressing trauma and facilitating psychological recovery in line with the National Program of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support initiated by the First Lady.

“Our partnership with the First Lady and her Foundation reflects our shared commitment to support displaced and war-affected families to physically and psychologically recover from the horrors of the war and rebuild their lives in dignity. The courage and resilience of these children, and the foster parents who have opened their hearts and homes in the midst of an ongoing war deserves all our admiration and support,” said Karolina Lindholm Billing, UNHCR’s Representative in Ukraine.

“Ukraine has been fruitfully cooperating with UN agencies for a long time, and I am glad that from now on UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, will join the partners of my Foundation. I am sure that our cooperation will contribute to the strengthening and scaling up of our projects in the areas of humanitarian assistance to large foster families, the construction of a new home for them and their psychosocial support ,” said Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine.

“Children living in large foster families in the midst of a full-scale war have proved to be among the most vulnerable. They have all come a long way from boarding schools to finding a new family. Because of the war, some of them have now lost their homes and the opportunity to study. This is a difficult challenge for the children, so our task is to support them and provide them with everything they need for comfortable living and learning, ” said Nina Horbachova, Director of Olena Zelenska Foundation

Since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022, UNHCR has scaled up its programmes and efforts to provide critical protection, social assistance and psychosocial services across Ukraine. We have reached millions of people (4.3 million in 2022; 2.63 million in 2023; and close to 1 million so far in 2024).

The assistance includes community-based mental health and psychosocial support to nearly 95,000 people as well as provision of child protection, recreational and psychosocial support activities for 72,000 war-affected and displaced children, organized by UNHCR and our local NGO partners.

Media contacts: 

Elisabeth Haslund, tel +380 95 239 0072, [email protected]

Tetiana Kuras, tel +38 098 576 28 44, [email protected]   

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter