The fight for shelter

The fight for the shelter of the “Good on Amur” Charitable Foundation began almost from the very beginning of its creation – in the spring of 2022. The IDP accommodation centre was opened by volunteers in an abandoned building of the Ukrainian State Geological Exploration Institute (UkrGRI), which had not been used for about 10 years. Dnipro residents, who became volunteers after the outbreak of full-scale war and started helping refugees travelling through our city, saw a large number of people from regions where active hostilities had begun who had nowhere to live. Then they found an old building of a scientific institute in their neighbourhood that had not been used for a long time, and after talking to the management of this institution, they began to settle the refugees there. The conditions in the building were terrible – almost all the rooms needed urgent repairs. Volunteers, with the help of concerned Dnipro residents and representatives of charitable organisations, began to equip the building to accommodate the refugees.

For more than a year and a half, the shelter has been operating, and the “Good on Amur” Charitable Foundation, which was set up by volunteers to support its activities, has been addressing issues important to the displaced people from the shelter – seeking donations and carrying out repairs to the building, provided refugees with humanitarian aid (found food, clothing, hygiene products, furniture and other items), assistance in accessing the services of doctors and psychologists, employment assistance for those who can work, education for children, collection and restoration of documents, etc.

And in July 2023,  of the “Good on Amur” Charitable Foundation volunteers learned that the building housing the shelter had been transferred from the management of the State Property Fund of Ukraine (from the balance sheet of the Ukrainian State Geological Exploration Institute) to the management of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, with the Dnipro Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine (Dnipro Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise) as the balance holder. Dobro na Amur received a letter from DniproNIISE signed by the director of the institute demanding that the IDPs vacate the building where the shelter was located. The volunteers asked the new owner of the building to sign a lease agreement with the CF ‘Dobro na Amur’ for the period until the end of the war in Ukraine and a year later. In response, representatives of the Dnipro Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise suggested that of the “Good on Amur” Charitable Foundation should contact the city and regional authorities or their authorised bodies to resolve the issue of providing other housing for the displaced persons from the shelter.

After that, negotiations with DniproNIISE, government officials from various institutions, representatives of the city and regional authorities lasted for almost a year, with little or no result – the displaced persons from the shelter were not provided with housing with acceptable conditions: in safer regions than the ones they left, and in shelters where all members of their families, including both spouses, children, pensioners, people with special needs and pets, whom the refugees took with them to escape from enemy shelling, and who live with them in the shelter of the CF “Good on Amur”, can live in a separate room.

The issue of accommodation for IDPs in the shelter was resolved only in July 2024, after the Vice Prime Minister and Head of the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk, visited the shelter of the “Good on Amur” Charitable Foundation, after being approached by the foundation’s volunteers. The building where the shelter is located was finally leased to the “Good on Amur” Charitable Foundation. The IDPs who live in the shelter can stay in this building and arrange their everyday life here for at least 5 years.

Representatives of the “Good on Amur” Charitable Foundation and residents of the “Good on Amur” shelter express their gratitude to Iryna Vereshchuk, who has been the Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine since September 2024, for responding to the appeal of the Foundation’s volunteers and helping to resolve the issue of renting the shelter building!