(LWI) - Last year at this time, Anastasia was on vacation at the Black Sea. This year, she sees the sea every day, but it is not the same sea, and she is not a tourist here. In early March she fled the war in Ukraine, together with her two children and her mother. Anastasia found a temporary home in Gdansk, Poland. Her husband and father stayed behind to fight for their country.
Anastasia is one of the 60,000 people who receive financial aid through The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) multipurpose cash assistance enrolment centers across the country – with funding coming primarily from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In the city of Gdansk, at the Baltic Sea, the refugees from Ukraine mix with the tourists who come here for a summer vacation. Their experience, however, is quite different – organizing life under unstable circumstances, the trauma of war and the sole care for children and elderly parents are especially challenging for mothers.