Diakonia: help that does not pass through us

If you have just arrived

• Find the nearest Orthodox parish, even a non-Ukrainian one. They almost always know whom to ask in town about housing, documents and language courses.
• Contact the national member organisation of the Ukrainian World Congress in your country: they keep lists of local centres.
• The official guidance for people who left Ukraine is maintained by UNHCR, with the current rules for each country.

What a parish can really do

A parish rarely has money, but it almost always has people. In practice that means: translating documents, going along to the doctor, advice about schools, furniture and clothes passed from hand to hand, work found through acquaintances, somewhere to leave a child for an hour, and a conversation with someone who went through the same thing a year earlier.

How to help others

• Come and ask the priest what is needed right now — the list is usually short and concrete.
• Take on one regular task rather than one heroic gesture: a lift once a week, cleaning once a month, keeping the schedule.
• Help with language: every community has people who still cannot deal with an official or a doctor on their own.
• Do not raise money “for the church” in group chats without the rector's knowledge — that is what most frauds look like.