The Rebuild Ukraine project was started by the Transform Uzhhorod Alliance, one of our communities in Transform Ukraine, to respond to the flood of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and refugees from the renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 22, 2022.  Several alliance members, starting on that first day, opened their churches and homes to temporarily house and feed IDPs and refugees.  It grew to 11 centers and 545 beds averaging 452 people each night.  Since then, we have converted six of these centers for longer-term housing providing private rooms for families, beds instead of mattresses on the floor, and shared kitchen and bath facilities.  We currently have 125 IDPs in those centers, but only occasionally provide community meals.

As more and more IDPs decided to remain in Uzhhorod, we began building tiny homes to provide more dignified and safe housing for these families.  Currently we have three homes open for families in our Huta IDP Community and are nearly ready to open the first three homes in our Velyki Lazy IDP Community, with another four homes starting to be built.

Other services we provided for the IDP community in Uzhhorod included medical pop-up clinics, eyeglasses distribution, trauma care counseling seminars for community leaders and university students, and church support.  We also provided transportation services for IDPs directly to their contacts in Europe to safeguard them from coyotes who were falsely offering such transportation only to enslave the IDPs in their human trafficking schemes.

As the community of Bucha was freed from Russian occupation, we briefly began to provide humanitarian aid, but as humanitarian aid was being provided by so many organizations, we felt we were no longer needed in that area.

Currently, our main focus is the building of 18 homes for IDP families in the Velyki Lazy IDP Community.  But Rebuild Ukraine has already moved beyond just caring for the IDPs and refugees that have flooded to Uzhhorod.  Although we will continue to serve this community, we are also focusing on providing affordable housing to those in war torn areas who have lost their homes.  Local government officials in two war torn communities have contracted with us to build a frame home in their communities with the potential of building even more to replace homes that have been destroyed in this war.

Thanks to the assistance of so many partners, we have already had the privilege of investing over $1 million towards rebuilding Ukraine.