Norwegian Refugee Council will increase support for Mariupol residents in 2024

The Mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko, met with the Head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Ukraine, Roberto Vila-Sexto. The areas of cooperation discussed included support for the I'Mariupol centers and the creation of temporary housing for Mariupol residents.

Over the year and a half of russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, the Mariupol municipality team has opened 25 I’Mariupol support centres (including two centres called I'Mariupol.Family) in 17 cities across Ukraine. They require ongoing support from partners, as more than 60,000 internally displaced persons from Mariupol are registered at the centres. Humanitarian kits, distribution of winter clothes for children or certificates from a partner to purchase these items, support for Mariupol schoolchildren with laptops and stationery sets are constant urgent needs to support people.

One of the main responses of the Mariupol City Council to the challenges of the war is the Mariupol Reborn project, which is being implemented together with domestic and international partners and financial institutions. As part of Mariupol Reborn, a model of transforming abandoned dormitories on the balance sheet of educational institutions into comfortable temporary housing for internally displaced persons from Mariupol was also developed.

" Since 2016, Mariupol has been gaining expertise in supporting internally displaced people. Back then, 120,000 new Mariupol residents came to our city. That's how we called internally displaced people. At the time, we could not even imagine that six years later this experience would be needed in relation to the people from Mariupol themselves. But it so happened that the enemy deliberately destroyed our city. More than 200,000 people left the city. At least 120,000 of them are now on the government-controlled territory of Ukraine. That is why I am very grateful to each partner for supporting the dormitory transformation project. This makes it possible to make the lives of our people in the new communities more comfortable and give them a much-desired sense of comfort," said Vadym Boichenko, Mayor of Mariupol.

The city council team has already launched a social housing project. On 27 April 2023, the first pilot dormitory for Mariupol residents was opened in Dnipro. This project consolidated the government, international partners, and business. At that time, Rinat Akhmetov's SCM became one of the partners. 127 Mariupol residents received keys to their homes, mostly women and children.

At present, Vadym Boichenko has offered potential partners from the NRC to cooperate on three dormitory buildings. In the end, the mayor of Mariupol and Roberto Vila-Sexto, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Ukraine, agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding for 2024, which will define the areas of cooperation. This document is already under development, which sends a strong message that the NRC will continue to support Mariupol residents next year.

"I admire what the team of the Mariupol municipality is doing and consider it my duty to help the people of Mariupol," said Roberto Vila-Sexto, Head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Ukraine.

We remind that NRC is a non-governmental Norwegian humanitarian organisation that operates in 25 countries, including Ukraine. Its goal is to protect the rights of people affected by forced displacement. It has been operating in Ukraine since 2014.