Jay: Hi, my name is Jay Rivera. I’ve been volunteering in Poland and Ukraine since June 2022, and right now the project I’m working on is the Phoenix. So the Phoenix is a long term stay shelter, but primarily a reintegration centre. What we do is we look at focusing on providing families with safety, security, meet all their basic needs completely for free, and during- we basically give people a time limit of about six months with the possibility of extension. But the entire purpose of the project is not to provide people with long term accommodation, but to provide them with pathways so that they can move forward, so that they can find their own home, they can find a new job set, a new skill set, so that it’s not just being reliant on donations or humanitarian aid or charity, but to figure out how to forge a way forward for themselves and their family.
Vic: So what kind of people come to your facility?
Jay: Primarily we accept people from the east, so internally displaced people by the government’s criteria. So it’s people from eastern regions that either are under occupation or at frontline areas and have lost their homes and have no other accommodations to relocate to.
Vic: How are you able to connect with these people?
Jay: Primarily through evacuation groups that’re operating on the front line, as well as coordination centres. So basically how the chain works is that evacuation teams will evacuate people to an evacuation centre. Sometimes Dnipro, sometimes Odesa, Kharkiv. There they’ll register as IDPs [Internally Displaced People]. When they get to the coordination centre, they’re asked, “Where would you like to go?”
If people say Lviv, then they’ll start coordinating with the Lviv Coordination Center, and then they buy them train tickets or bus tickets. They get to Lviv, and then they figure out where they want to go next. So what we do is we work with a coordination centre in Lviv, and when people say they want to go Lviv, they’re provided with an opportunity for us. Then we’re given their contact, we speak with them, we explain about our project, that our project is not a long term solution, but it’s looking at helping them transition to finding their own way.
So there are a lot of different options when it comes to housing, especially in Lviv Oblast. There were a lot of like, mobile homes set up, like, uh, modular, modular homes set up by the Polish government, German government, Norwegian government. Which is fantastic, but one of the things that they don’t really talk about is that while you’re there, yes, they’ll pay for your utilities, yes, you’re not paying for the accommodation itself, but you still need to pay for food. You still need to pay for medical care. And the stipend that is provided by the Ukrainian government is not nearly enough. So if I remember correctly, and don’t quote me on this, I would say do a little bit of research, but I’m pretty sure it’s 3000 hryvnia per child [Ukraine Is Home website suggests 3000 for children https://ukraineishome.org/assistance-for-internally-displaced-people, about £52].
Vic: Is that like a one-off or-
Jay: Per month, which is not nearly enough considering the food prices in Lviv Oblast.
Olena: 300, sorry.
Jay: 3000.
Olena: I just saw an interview with a mother saying it was 300 per child, 300 hryvnia per child per month.
Vic: Wow.
Jay: Oh no, it definitely is not 300.
Olena: It is.
Jay: Seriously? Because I think that-
Vic: That’s like one meal.
Olena: It must be something with like the stipend that is added on top of what they get as IDPs. But for people in general, in Ukraine, it’s 300 per child per month.
Jay: Yes, but is that for an IDP or no? Because I think the IDP payments are higher.
Olena: Yes, but it’s like included- so 300 is included into like other stipends that IDPs receive, and per child it comes to, like, more than 300 because-
Jay: Jesus, that’s even worse than I thought!
Olena: Yes <laughs>
Jay: Yeah, because I know that’s been one of the things. So we have had some families who have initially rejected our offer of coming to live with us, and have chosen to, like, rent their own apartment. And they’re like, “Yeah, I have some savings, I’ll be fine”. And then about two, three months later, then we get a call asking if they could come stay with us.
Vic: So how does the financial side of your organization work? Like you provide all of the resources for people?
Jay: Yes, we provide all the resources for people. So we provide food, shelter, utilities, all that’s covered. Then they can receive free medical care at the local hospital. But unfortunately that doesn’t cover prescriptions, and unfortunately our organization right now is not able to cover prescriptions. We do our best to provide like veterinarian care or find donors who will help with the cost. So we had- we’re going to be doing a mass sterilization of a lot of the animals that are at the shelter, so that we found a donor for. Yeah, that’s primarily what we do. But when it comes to like individual needs, we don’t help with individual needs. So let’s say a family wants to cook a specific meal for their kids because their kids are picky. Unfortunately, that’s on the family. What we do is we look out for the overall group meals. So every meal that we have is a big family style meal. People have different- we rotate different cooks, so each family basically helps out at least once per once per week, and they cook for, right now we have 37 residents.
Vic: And you mentioned that previously to us starting recording that residents do volunteer work?
Jay: Yes, residents are responsible for participating in three hours per day of volunteer activities. That can range from cooking, cleaning, to helping sort humanitarian aid, to doing inventory, reaching out to other humanitarian groups, coordinating logistics. Because there are so many pieces that are involved in the humanitarian side when it comes to like running an organization, that we’re trying to expose them to different things that they may be interested in down the line. And then also providing them with valuable job experience, which then they can put on their resume. And then also gaining access to international contacts.
Vic: And you mentioned also previously that you’ve got someone in-house that can help people with working on their resumes, etc?
Jay: Yes, yes. So that’s Lina. Lina does resume building workshops as well as Microsoft Office training courses. She’s also done a Chat GPT training course on how basically set up Chat GPT, as well as train it and other AI tools.
Vic: And how long has your facility been have- able to have residents for now?
Jay: Since the end of August last year. So that’s nine months.
Vic: So have you had people kind of complete their six month period and move on?
Jay: Yes. So we’ve had people complete their six month period and then we’ve extended it, because while we were initially getting started, we weren’t able to offer all the different opportunities that we wanted to offer. So for us, it’s very important that people actually have a pathway going forward, rather than being like, “Okay, six months is over, time to move on”.
What we really want to do is we want to create lasting solutions for people. We want- so for me, my big frustration with the entire crisis and the entire response is that so many groups have focused on Band-Aid solutions. You know, if you provide someone with food, with shelter, good enough. But that’s not good enough. Because you’re not providing people with a clear pathway, like move forward, what comes next. Instead they’re just becoming active or recipients of aid, rather than- and becoming just reliant on that organization, rather than figuring out how to be self-reliant, and giving people the tools where they can build a future themselves. And that’s really what the Phoenix is focused on. The Phoenix is focused on providing people with a pathway forward.
Vic: So have you had anyone graduate your program yet?
Jay: Not yet, not yet. But right now, we have five families that are currently employed that receive jobs in the local villages. We’re hoping that they’ll be moving forward. We also have- instead of volunteers being responsible for overall running of the shelter, what we do is we try to empower our residents to take responsibility and basically steer the shelter the way that they want it to be.
So right now we have Elena, who came to live with us in September, her and her family. She’s currently in charge of the day-to-day operations of the shelter. So when it comes to creating chore rotations, making sure that people are like completing their tasks, the tasks are being completed on time and up to snuff. That’s what she’s responsible for. We have Tanya, who’s responsible for kitchen inventory and supplies. So she makes sure that we’re making the best use of our resources, as well as things aren’t being wasted. Also keeping track of expiration dates and things like that, and also notifying us when we need to purchase more supplies.
Then we have Elena. Elena, she loves to bake, so she’s kind of taken upon herself to do baked goods just about every day. So whenever everyone wakes up in the morning, they’re treated to little brownies or cakes, and it’s nice to walk into the kitchen and just have fresh baked bread. So every day we also make homemade bread. We had a master class on how to make bread, where we taught all the residents how to make bread, and then every family rotates in learning how to do it better.
Vic: Where are you able to get the funds from for this whole project?
Jay: Crying and begging, that’s primarily it. But then we also have a very generous corporate sponsor, Xylem [https://www.xylem.com], who has been absolutely fantastic. And then we’re also supported by many grassroots organizations. So there’s Convoy for Ukraine who’s been incredibly generous. David has introduced us to so many great pathways and other volunteers. Shannon, who runs Lions of Lviv, has also been instrumental in helping us create new partnerships. Solidarity Engineering has helped us with hygiene, so now we no longer are concerned about hygiene, so we can provide hygiene completely free to all our residents at all times, and have no worries.
They also now have taken a new step where they’ve hired Alina to serve as a- to serve as their liaison, and also to run STEM classes as well as women’s health classes. So now we have that offering as well. We have different very skilled people that come to help us. We have one of the top door makers in America that comes out for about two, three weeks every year and then teaches people how to do woodworking. So when you get to our shelter and you see our kitchen, you’ll notice that all our kitchen furniture is really old tables. So they were all donated from Germany, from <???>. And some were good, some weren’t good. Well, Peter decided take it upon himself to teach our residents how to sand, how to finish. And now they’re gorgeous, which is also a very nice skill.
So for me, I was a senior account manager for a medical communications company. So when it came on to actual hands-on knowledge, doing DIY, all of that, I had none. No experience whatsoever. But through volunteering I gained a lot of experience. However, I’m primarily kept away from power tools. It’s been determined that if you want something fixed, do not have me involved. <laughs>
Vic: So is Xylem a Ukrainian company, or?
Jay: No, Xylem is an American company. It’s the world’s largest producer of water solutions technology. Yeah, so they’ve helped us with installing new wells. Right now we just drilled a new artisanal well, and then also they’ve helped us with installing electrics so that we could open last year. And then they’re also helping us with future projects such as the renovation of rooms on the third floor for veterans.
Vic: So you’re kind of becoming slightly self-sufficient. You’ve got your own well, you mentioned that you’ve been getting some animals?
Jay: Yes. Well, and that’s really the goal. So there are there- oh my god, Phoenix is so vastly complex, like when it comes to the project, and basically, what are the measures of success. So number one is to provide people with a way to move forward. Number two is to say “refugee shelters are not sustainable”. They’re not. They rely on donations. Donations drop, and then when you start relying on grants, grants are hard to get. Initially, when the war first started, there was so much money available. Like, there was, there was no, you know- like you wanted something, you could fundraise $5,000 within the space of a day. With no problem, with no real effort. You just throw something on Facebook and it was done. However now, trying to fundraise that same $5,000 will take months. Because, just people are tired. People have given so much. And also, there are other issues going on in the world. So when you’re looking at creating a long term stay shelter or a refugee shelter or a veteran reintegration center, you need to go with the belief that this is not sustainable.
So how do you make it sustainable? And that is the second goal of the Phoenix, is to build a self-sustainable project. So. You have to look at what are your primary costs? Your primary costs are utilities, their food, as well as, you know, renovations and everything else, as well as rent. So how can you alleviate the rent? If you’re a Ukrainian charity and you’re operating a shelter for internally displaced people, the government can rent out a building to you for one hryvnia per year. So there you go. Now you’ve got rent covered.
Next is utilities. How do you lower utility costs? You look at green energy. So solar, wind, there’s a whole bunch of different options. We have an American company called side Sujen [https://sujeninternational.com], who does wind turbines. We met with them at the Rebuild Ukraine conference two years ago, and I was telling them about this project and how I really wanted this to be a model of how refugee response and crisis response should be done in the future. Because instead of- so when I think about the, when the war first started, I saw so many shelters and things like that that were having hundreds of thousands of dollars dumped on them, right? And where was that money going? That money was going into new vehicles. That money was going into painting the walls, creating an artistic space. You know, making things more comfortable. And it was because they just expected to always have the resources to run, right? So instead of investing into actual infrastructure to make sure that your future is stable and that your project can operate in the long term, it was more focused on short term needs.
For me, so I started Hope Shelter that’s located in Przemyśl. There, we always struggled to do rent. For about two years we were month to month, unless we had a very gracious sponsor that was able to cover us for three months, and then that gave us three months of breathing room, which was completely unexpected. So always the name of the game was, how do we reduce our costs?
And the big problem was, we were renting a building, so if we did massive infrastructure improvements such as installing solar panels or upgrading the heating system, it was to the benefit the owner. And the owner wasn’t going to give us a discount on the rent, because he would say, “Well, I didn’t want this anyway, right? Like, what I want is, I want the cash. So great you want to install solar panels so you can have free electricity, that’s on you”. So then donors aren’t interested, because they know that we might lose the building in a month if we can’t make rent. Which is completely understandable.
When we started this project, it was about focusing on building the infrastructure necessary to survive long term. So Sujen has offered to donate 300 kilowatts of wind turbines. So then great, now you have electricity. You’ve got water covered. Next is heat. So how can you provide heat? Because even if you’re running with solar and wind, running off electric heating is ridiculously inefficient, and really not feasible with the with the winters that we have here. So why not look at new technologies? So one new technology that we’re looking at right now is cryptocurrency mining.
Vic: <laughs>
Jay: Yup!
Vic: Yeah, I guess it puts out heat.
Jay: It puts out heat. But there’s actually two companies in Ukraine which developed cryptocurrency mining boilers, which harnesses the heat that it puts out to heat the water. And then, you’re able to pipe it into a radiator system, as well as provide hot water. And then, in addition to that, then you’re generating a passive income for all the other expenses, which you can’t cover normally.
Leave a Reply