Letter from Ukraine

Letter from our colleague Valeriia Pryhozhiya

Dear friends!

My name is Valeriia Pryhozhiya and I am the head of the PCA therapy section at the Ukrainian Umbrella Association of Psychotherapists. Currently I am in the city of Dnipro, Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the war, a volunteer group of psychologists has been operating in the Dnipro, providing free assistance to many people who now need professional support.

Now the Dnipro is the first peaceful city from the front line. There are many refugees from Luhansk, Donetsk and Kharkiv regions now in our city. The wounded are brought here first of all. But as in all of Ukraine, sirens and explosions are heard every day.
We continue the traditions of the Maidan Psychological Crisis Service. Our specialists have extensive experience. Now we have resumed our activities as the Psychological Crisis Service of Dnipro and Dnipropetrovsk region, which was launched in 2014.

The main areas of work are:
- work with migrants,

- work with the military,

- work with families of servicemen,

- work with the wounded in hospitals,

- support of the families of the victims,

- training and supervision of specialists.

- telephone counseling hotline 0800330769

All consultations are provided free of charge on a volunteer basis.
Since the beginning of the war, many psychologists, including specialists in our service, have lost their practice or continue to provide crisis support to their clients free of charge or at a reduced price.
It is clear that this work is very difficult and requires considerable resources.
We are looking for funding to support our specialists who continue to work in these extremely difficult conditions.
Currently, there are about 50 specialists in the city and region.

If you have the opportunity to provide such support, please contact Valeria Prigogine

+380666834282 (telegram, viber)

cupofmilk28.01@gmail.com (pay pal) With great gratitude Valeriia Pryhozhyna

Please also find more details from Valeriia in her second email to the board. ...

I would like to describe the situation in which we are now. The organization for which I am now raising money is completely volunteer. It arose in response to the emerging need and grows and flexibly changes in accordance with the demands and needs of the time. She is not registered at all. It arose entirely on personal connections and enthusiasm. I know very many, because for more than 20 years I have been

organizing psychotherapy training in our city. Our leader and ideological inspirer Tatyana Ermolaeva is a teacher at the university. Referral coordinators are generally well-known and respected psychologists and psychotherapists in the city. Many of us have our own clients that we try to support in crisis, plus the burden of working in a crisis service. Now we understand that for further development we still need to register this initiative as a public organization. The problem is that in connection with the hostilities in the Dnieper and Ukraine, all registries for the registration of any organizations were closed! Since May, they have resumed work, but the queue is now huge. Therefore, for any processes - registration, opening an account, monitoring special platforms for collecting money - it takes a lot of time. Time is now a resource that is very limited. We try to cope with new and new challenges, but we are just psychologists and psychotherapists who did not plan and I expected that we would have to solve all these issues. As for fundraising. At present, all the money that we managed to collect is about 1500 Euros spent on travel or gasoline for the trips of our specialists. This is the minimum that we were able to pay our colleagues, especially those who live in the Dnipropetrovsk region and often have to travel long distances in order to come personally to the hospital to the wounded or to shelters with migrants. We keep records of income and expenses and can provide a report in the form of a Google spreadsheet to everyone. There will be no checks, but we trust our volunteers, we see their performance reports and hear the feedback from our clients. Therefore, after some time, I hope not very long, we will be able to provide an invoice to our organization. Now, you can transfer money either to the account of our parent organization in Lviv, and then we will figure out how to send money to Dnipro. Or, for now, transfer money to my personal card with access to a Google spreadsheet with expenses on demand. Or wait until we can register and have a separate account. Thanks for your willingness to help. Sincerely, Valeria Prigozhina.

If you would like to donate something you can either

pay directly to the private PayPal account of Valeriia (see above), OR
via UUAP Ukrainian Umbrella Association of Psychotherapy 79021 Lviv, Kulparkivska Str. 95, Ukraine
IBAN: UA26 3252 6800 0002 6006 0036 2600 1 BIC/SWIFT: LVIVUA2X

Bank: JSCB LVIV BANK, LVIV, UKRAINE
Contact to their executive director: Dr. Alexander Ryshkovskyy, rysch@abb.lviv.ua