Our Help Centre in Beroun: We Give People Hope
Published: Dec 14, 2022 Reading time: 3 minutes
Our Help Centre was established on the premises of the company Tipsport in cooperation with the city of Beroun and Caritas Czech Republic on March 15, 2022. Since then, the Centre has provided refugees fleeing Ukraine with food, humanitarian aid and counseling services.
Initially, only Czech volunteers worked at the Help Centre. Now, however, the vast majority of the volunteers are Ukrainians for whom the Centre has been and still is a sort of community centre where they can meet fellow Ukrainians.
Maryna is one of the people who work at the Centre. Right after the war started, she helped in Kharkiv as a driver brining families to safety. She arrived in the Czech Republic in April 2022. In August, she started working as a field worker to help her fellow countryfolk.
“I am happy that there are no bombs flying over me and that I live in a peaceful city. In Ukraine, I woke up and the person I talked to yesterday was suddenly not there anymore. Here at the Help Centre, we give people hope. That is the most important thing,” says Maryna.
The Centre’s staff help Ukrainian refugees find housing, work or even medical care. They also help them fill out forms from the Labor Office forms, registering children for primary and secondary schools or for language courses.
“I came to the Czech Republic with my children and parents. We were very scared,” says Olena, one of the clients and now a volunteer at the Help Centre. “We found everything we needed in the Centre. Dishes, bedding, clothes and toys for the children. We also received specific advice regarding finding work and housing or about how to arrange an appointment with a doctor. It was this kind of support, in this very difficult situation for us, that acted as a springboard for our successful integration in a foreign country,” she adds.
The Help Centre is also an important place for the elderly. The closeness and the familiar faces help provide a sort of constant for their life in the Czech Republic. That said, nearly all of them want to return home to Ukraine as soon as possible.
"...Often, they spend their time in Ukraine in shelters and after some time, they return to the Czech Republic,” says Mariana, a People in Need worker who has worked at the Centre since the beginning.
In September and October, the Help Centre supported a total of 603 Ukrainian refugees. These figures show that the need for help is still great, which is why we have agreed with the representatives of Tipsport to extend the operation of the Centre. Starting in the new year, we plan to start a variety of new activities, including a club for mothers with small children (who will not be enrolled in kindergarten), a club for the elderly, and tutoring support and career counseling for older children.
