2nd month of heroic resistance: $2.37 million – UCU’s contribution to Ukraine’s victory

It should be noted that during the first month of the war, Ukrainian Catholic University allocated $1.18 million for volunteer and humanitarian aid during the war. In the second month of full-scale hostilities in Ukraine, the university contributed $1.19 million to charity.

Humanitarian Front

From March 24 to April 24, the UCU Volunteer Center, with a permanent team of 80 people, received and distributed aid from 5 trucks, 12 vans and five cars from Ukraine, France, Poland, Romania and even Australia! Center received 50 pallets of food from the Austrian retailer Kastner Gruppe. Also, with the help of Meest Express, Center received humanitarian aid from the United States and Canada.

The UCU Volunteer Center processed 230 requests from the military, volunteers, hospitals and civilians in need. We have sent more than 30 tons of aid to more than 40 settlements, including Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, Mariupol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Okhtyrka, Odessa, Zaporizhia, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, Dnipro, Volnovakha, Rubizhne, Zhytomyr and others.

In addition, 2,200 sets of thermal underwear, 3,000 balaclavas and 1,500 bandages (buffs) were ordered, which now keep our defenders warm.

UCU students are implementing a unique project to produce thermal batteries for the military in partnership with the Lviv Candle Manufactory. These thermal accumulators help serve our protectors as body warmers and light sources. Since the start of the project, students have made and transferred 6685 thermal accumulators. Their production took 1.2 tons of paraffin.

During the war, the “United Ukraine” organization, which has been operating at the Ukrainian Catholic University since 2016 and is known for its cultural and educational projects (e.g. “Theater to the East”, “Rejoice Together”), reformatted its work on humanitarian aid. UCU graduates, who are the coordinators of this initiative, in cooperation with Lviv entrepreneurs and volunteer centers, have independently delivered 5 aid trucks to Kyiv and Kharkiv: protective equipment, hygiene products, food, medicines, and things for children.

The student organization TeploDiya, whose mission is to take care of the homeless, prepares and distributes food for about 80 people in need in the center of Lviv every Monday. TeploDiya also held the Easter Feast initiative and organized a Sunday Easter breakfast for 55 residents of the UCU shelter in Khutorivka.

Active volunteering and other student initiatives at UCU continue. During the second month of the war, students wove 4 camouflage nets, wrote more than 300 letters of support to the military, baked 165 kg of pastries, and conducted workshops for children forced to leave their homes because of the war.

UCU also actively cooperates with the “Ukrainian Educational Platform” charitable organization providing protection and security equipment. Notably, during this month, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Educational Platform and the Center for Volunteerism and Protection, UCU provided food supplies to liberated cities and those on the front line.

Many students and university staff are involved in other humanitarian initiatives outside of UCU. In particular, working at the Lviv Volunteer Kitchen; assisting children of migrants in shelters, schools and institutions for children with disabilities; volunteering in geriatric boarding houses and shelters. About 60 students are involved in initiatives in their communities outside Lviv.

Medical Front

The Center for Volunteering and Protection and the “Wings of Hope” Charitable Foundation continue to be key partners of Ukrainian Catholic University in providing medical and tactical goods to both military and civilians throughout Ukraine. In cooperation with these organizations, from March 24 to April 24, the center managed to provide vital medical supplies and equipment to hospitals and medical units amounting to 839,900 USD in cities such as Dnipro, Lviv Truskavets, Odesa, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Kropyvnytskyi, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv and others.

In particular, the center purchased 8 V.A.K. devices and containers for vacuum wound therapy and tactical medicine: 3,000 compression bandages, 18,780 hemostatic compression bandages, 4,450 tactical turnstiles, and 4,645 first aid kits.

About 3 tons of medical supplies were delivered to Ukraine thanks to the international organization “Rotary International” and representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Australia, with the assistance of Qantas. Essential items such as turnstiles, Israeli bandages, hemostatics, surgical instruments, etc., also came with this consignment.

Together with the “ZDOROVI” agency, 35 medical monitors were received from the Philips Charitable Foundation and donated to hospitals in different regions of Ukraine. We transferred more than 350 walkie-talkies to the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine.

In cooperation with the University of Eichstätt, the UCU Volunteer Hundred managed to purchase a large amount of insulin (250 liters) for migrants in the Lviv region and other regions of Ukraine. In cooperation with Caritas Ukraine, Support International, the parish of St. Volodymyr in Munich, and air carriers, private volunteers in Poland provided insulin free of charge while maintaining the temperature regime at the disposal of the Medical Department of the Lviv Military Administration.

Upon individual requests, the UCU Student Volunteer Center formed and sent 915 boxes of vital medical supplies, 20 wheelchairs, more than 270 individual IFAK first aid kits, 1,338 turnstiles and 622 hemostatic bandages. Among the recipients were NGO “Hospitallers”, Shalimov’s National Institute, hospitals in Kryvyi Rih, Vyshgorod, Kharkiv, Dnipro, children’s dispensary and regional medical center in Chernihiv, Mykolayiv maternity hospital etc.

In cooperation with volunteers of the project “3D Printing for Ukraine”, a volunteer group of UCU students, graduates, and teachers of the Faculty of Applied Sciences organized the production of quality turnstiles using 3D printers. They were tested by foreign experts and Ukrainian soldiers in the field and received positive feedback. Volunteers are now working on scaling the production.

Ukrainian Catholic University is open to cooperation and assistance to teams that were forced to evacuate from the war zone and need space to continue their activities and cooperate with those organizations that came to help Ukrainians during the war. Thus, international teams of medical specialists Rubicon and SMART Medical Aid, including teams of the All-Ukrainian Resuscitation Council and Rapid Aid Liaison Group, started their work on the university premises.

Training sessions on providing home medical care were held for students from UCU and two other higher education institutions in Lviv. Certified instructors of the All-Ukrainian Resuscitation Council and teachers of the Faculty of Health Sciences of UCU were involved in the training.

UCU has organized a 2-week training course for volunteers – physiotherapists, and occupational therapists, who will later be able to work in the Ministry of Health and military hospitals in Lviv, which will take an active part in the rehabilitation of wounded military and civilians across Ukraine. 70 volunteers have been trained already.

These initiatives were implemented thanks to the established cooperation with the Stepan Gzhytskyi Lviv National University of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnologies and Ivan Bobersky Lviv State Physical Culture University.

Hospitality Front

All previously arranged UCU locations continue to receive and provide for internally displaced persons from different regions of Ukraine.

During the second month of the war, UCU Shelter on John Paul II Avenue, equipped to accommodate people with disabilities, became a temporary home for 118 people. Today, there are 162 people (volunteers, guests, internally displaced persons) on the premises of the Collegium on the campus on Stryjska Street.

Shelter coordinators arranged consultations for UCU guests with doctors from the “Zdorovya Poruch” (Health Nearby) clinic, the UCU Legal Clinic, and the Psychological Counseling Clinic. In UCU shelters, victims of the war receive social and psychological services, counseling, financial assistance, social adaptation, representation in the production of documents for people with disabilities who cannot cope with such a task, spiritual support etc.

In total, during the two months of the war, more than 700 IDPs from 19 regions of Ukraine and more than 75 different settlements, most of them from the war-affected areas, were housed in various UCU locations.