Like the most of other people who lived in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Lydia was forced to leave her native Horlivka in 2014 due to the start of hostilities. Being hundreds of kilometers away from her home is not an easy challenge, especially for a person over 60.
For the first time, the woman settled in a modular town in Kryvyi Rih. Due to difficult living conditions (summer temperatures exceeded 38 degrees), the woman was forced to look for a new home again. That’s how she got acquainted with the local team of the CF “Right to Protection” (R2P).
In 2016, the monitoring specialist of the R2P Olena Pazenko helped Lydia move to a dormitory in Sofiyivka. The woman lived there for the next three years. But a modest pension which she received was not enough to pay the high cost of utilities. Lydia was forced to return to the modular town. Subsequently, the woman tried to find housing in the cities of Pokrov and Zhovti Vody, but all these attempts were in vain.
However, Lydia did not despair, and once our colleague offered to apply for temporary housing in a dormitory in Kryvyi Rih. The first floor of the building was reconstructed thanks to the efforts of the Ukrainian Social Investment Fund (USIF) and local authorities.
There is one week left before the opening of this compact residence place. The woman still had to collect a package of documents, while many other IDPs had already handed them in. At first, it seemed that there was nothing to hope for. However, with the help of our colleagues, all the necessary documents were collected and submitted within one day.
«IDP’s applications for temporary housing are being considered by a Commission with the use of a priority-based scoring system. Ms. Lydia received approval of the Commission and was settled in a 1-room apartment in an apartment-type dormitory. Therefore, we emphasize that every internally displaced person has the right to submit documents and stand in line for temporary housing, even if the number of people in the queue exceeds the number of apartments available,»,
– said Myroslava Sushchenko, the head of the Dnieper-Zaporizhia office of the R2P.
Our colleague Olena Pazenko warmly tells about the recent meeting with Lydia:
«Recently, during a monitoring visit to the compact residence place, we talked to Ms. Lydia about her impeccable Ukrainian language and it turned out that her daughters graduated from the Faculty of Ukrainian Philology, and Ms. Lydia’s older brother is a famous Ukrainian poet Leonid Talalai, whose works are studied in schools. Mrs. Lydia is a bright person and very modest! I am so glad that our efforts were not in vain, I am glad to see her eyes shining with happiness – such moments give hope that in the future every person who was forced to leave home will definitely find it!»
Today Lydia is finally happy and gets used to living in her new home.
We are sincerely glad that this story turned out to be a success. We wish Lydia to never feel any discomfort in her life again and to only feel warmth, coziness, joy, and happiness. We also thank the city authorities of Kryvyi Rih and the Ukrainian Social Investment Fund for their help in realizing Lydia’s dream.
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