LWF’s local partner organization provides prompt and comprehensive assistance
(LWI) - The young woman the case workers received on a cold night in April 2024 was Eritrean. She had spent more than a month in the forest of the Poland-Belarus border and had just given birth to a baby girl.
"The night was cold; the mother wrapped the newborn baby in her blouse. Border guards heard her cry for help and took the mother and her newborn to the hospital in Hajnówka," reads the report that the team of Polish organization Egala, later submitted. The newborn was placed in an incubator and later transferred to a children's hospital. The mother received material aid and psychosocial and legal assistance and now awaits the outcome of her asylum procedure. Egala is a local partner of The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Poland.
Volunteers responded
The woman and her child are two of almost 1,000 lives saved in April and May 2024 with LWF's support in the border area from Poland to Belarus. LWF Poland has been able to support Egala, which provides critical services to migrants along the Poland-Belarus border through field interventions – 351 in April and May alone, benefitting more than 900 migrants from countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and others.