From bandura players to dancers to footballers, hundreds of young Ukrainians in Poland can keep doing what they love thanks to a volunteer-led effort.
Many passed on to other parts of Poland or returned to Ukraine; many others remained in the city for extended periods. These women, men, and children left behind their homes and jobs in Ukraine, and many were also forced to give up their interests and passions.One may have abandoned a beloved musical instrument, others had to give up horse riding, swimming, or making art.
“When the rockets started falling and we had to flee Kyiv, I thought it was over with music, that I would never return to it. Someone who played the violin or trumpet could take their instrument with them when they fled Ukraine. Not a piano,” 15-year-old Mykhailo says sadly.
He studied piano at a music school in Ukraine for many years and won an international competition. He cannot imagine life without Bach, Chopin, and Mozart.
Together with his mother and younger brother, he ended up in Lublin, a city of 350,000 people close to the Ukrainian border. “I was sure it was over with music because with war staring us in the face, the most important thing was our safety,” he recalls. In Lublin, however, the teenager’s mother heard from volunteers about a program to help refugees.
Mykhailo and his brother Mykola were both enabled to continue their music studies through a scholarship program for Ukrainian refugees in Lublin.
“When we found out that we would be able to take music lessons again, we couldn’t believe it. We were incredibly happy,” Mykhailo says.
Lessons Only Once a Week
This was a drop in the ocean of need, as the teenager’s fingers needed daily training.
“Since March, I’ve really been looking forward to Tuesdays when I have lessons. … In Kyiv I practiced every day, we had a piano at home. I could sit down at it whenever I liked,” he says. He practices under the watchful eye of Tatiana Kotlarova, who was a soloist at the Kharkiv opera. She is a refugee too.
Until recently, the lessons were held at the Bronowice House of Culture in Lublin. Now Mykhailo and other scholarship awardees practice their art and rehearse at Baobab, a refugee integration center that opened in January thanks to the financial support of international organizations. The 1,500-square-meter space, once a bank, has plenty of space and equipment includes two pianos.
The lessons helped Mykhailo complete the year’s course work at his Kyiv school. Tamara Semchenko, his piano teacher there, emailed him the music he needed to learn and when he was ready, he filmed everything with his phone and sent it to Kyiv.
“I want to be a professional musician in the future, so it’s very important for me not to lose touch with my instrument,” the boy says.
Today, 10 months after arriving in Lublin, Mykhailo can finally play whenever he likes, as his family managed to have his piano shipped to Poland. He’s recently added singing lessons to his musical training.
Keeping Passion Alive
The scholarships for talented young people and adults are the brainchild of the Homo Faber Association, which has been helping migrants, among others,to start new lives in Lublin since 2004 and working to ensure that foreigners are not discriminated against and excluded. Before the invasion of Ukraine, four people worked there. Today there are almost 70, involved in a wide range of activities to help refugees from Ukraine. Money for their activities comes mainly from large international NGOs such as the Danish Refugee Council, Oxfam, and UNHCR.
“We knew that developing a passion could help Ukrainians forget about the war, at least for a while,” says Piotr Skrzypczak, the major force behind the project. The germ of the idea came from the success of micro-credit plans for the poorest in several countries. “We wanted to give these people a pole, not a fish,” he says.
Homo Faber raised funds to kick off the project at a charity auction held by artists for the benefit of migrants and refugees held in closed detention centers.In the face of war, it was decided that the money raised – about 120,000 Polish zlotys, or 25,000 euros – would instead go to help refugees from the war raging in neighboring Ukraine.
Children and young people make up the large majority of the more than 200 scholarship winners, joined by some adults, like one woman who revived her baking business thanks to the gift of an oven.
Even when funding for the scholarships dried up last fall, Homo Faber had no plans to shelve the program.
“The war has already interrupted these people’s passions once, so we have been looking for support,” Skrzypczak says. One Lublin foundation has pledged its support, and the association is talking with other potential sponsors.
Money for Development
The stipends are intended for the personal development of the awardee. The association spends the money on their behalf.
“When, for example, a young athlete needed to buy football boots as part of his scholarship, a volunteer would go shopping with him,” Skrzypczak says.
Groups have also benefited – a children’s choir and a guitar ensemble are among those awarded stipends.
“There was a girl who learned to play the bandura in Ukraine and now she has been able to continue this thanks to the scholarship. We managed to find a teacher for her,” Skrzypczak says.
The project has also helped young karate and judo practitioners, swimmers, and artisans to develop their hobbies or careers.
Homo Faber also raised funds to purchase a small electric oven for a Ukrainian woman who used to bake cakes before the war. After a brief return to Ukraine, she is now back in Lublin, baking for her friends, and earning money by selling her cakes to the public.
Before fleeing Ukraine, 17-year-old Kasia had plans and dreams of developing her vocal and artistic talents. She was preparing for the entrance exam to an art school until, she says, “From one minute to the next, everything was in ruins.”
Kasia and her one-year-younger brother came to Lublin accompanied by family friends from her home city of Kryvyi Rih. For professional and other reasons, her parents stayed behind; their adult friends later moved to another country, leaving the two teenagers unaccompanied in Poland.
Soon after arriving in Lublin, she was referred to the Lublin Social Committee to Aid Ukraine, a group started on the first day of the Russian invasion, where he learned about the scholarships. This tip rapidly improved the quality of the young woman’s life in a foreign country. She wanted to continue her schooling at an art-oriented secondary school, but first had to pass the exams.
“As part of the scholarship, I was able to pay for a very intense course in painting and drawing. Thanks to this, I got into the school,” she says.
Hundreds of volunteers donate their time and skills to the Lublin Social Committee to Aid Ukraine, an informal organization headed by Homo Faber. They include Polish and Ukrainian students, City Hall officials, and the mayor of Lublin. Volunteers quickly organized themselves into subgroups responsible for housing, transport, delivering, food, and child care.
“As an aid committee, we have worked closely with the city and the officials from the beginning. We have support from them on various levels,” Skrzypczak says.
It was the aid committee that posted a questionnaire online to launch the scholarship drive last March. Ukrainians entered their personal details, described their artistic, athletic, or other interests and explained why it was important to them to keep up with their hobbies and vocations. Word of the program spread rapidly through the aid committee’s many contacts on social media.
Trust Is the Key
Jaroslawa Szewczuk of Lublin City Hall’s culture department helps coordinate the scholarship program. Of Ukrainian origin, she speaks perfect Ukrainian, which is a great help in contacts with refugees.
When it came to deciding who would receive a scholarship, program staff did not ask for certificates or diplomas applicants had earned in Ukraine.
“We knew that when someone fled the war, they did not take [such documents]. So everything was based on trust,” she says.
Day to day management of the scholarship program falls to Szewczuk and three other volunteers. Their first target was to award scholarships to 100 people.
The first intake received around 120 applications. Then, after two months, there was a second call and another 100 people applied. The volunteers contacted each of them by phone to find out their motivations during the interview. Most wished to continue their training in one of four fields: sports, music, dance, and visual arts.
The four volunteer coordinators also took charge of administrative tasks like finding places to hold lessons. Fortunately, Szewczuk says, the city’s cultural institutions and sports facilities were willing to cooperate.
In need of teachers and trainers for their charges, the coordinators sought talent among both Poles and refugees. The latter are paid the same rate as their Polish peers. “We wanted it to be decent money, to appreciate their work,” Szewczuk says.
At every step, the volunteers could count on the support of the Homo Faber Association. Volunteers select scholarship winners; the funding is provided by Homo Faber in its role as lead group in the aid committee.
Return to Normality
Draginja Nadazdin, for years the head of Amnesty International in Poland and today the country director of Doctors Without Borders, views the scholarship program as someone who knows how it feels to be a refugee. As a teenager, she had to flee the violence amid the collapse of Yugoslavia.
The sudden flight to safety abroad meant giving up her dream of learning to fly gliders. No one gave her a helping hand like the activists in Lublin are doing now.
Nadazdin has worked with migrants for many years and knows that the most important thing is to enable refugees to come out of limbo and a sense of hopelessness.
“The fact that these people, especially the young, have the opportunity to continue what was important to them is crucial. Because it allows them to not only relive the memories of what they did, but also to start doing it again,” Nadazdin says.
“War is a crisis situation, and during a crisis life loses predictability,” comments psychologist, crisis intervener, and trauma specialist Katarzyna Ciszewska. “Giving refugees the opportunity to continue their education in an activity they are passionate about can be very helpful to restore their sense of security,” Ciszewska continues.
Money and Hope
Homo Faber’s scholarships help young people revive a piece of their earlier life, says Krzysztof Stanowski, in charge of international cooperation at Lublin City Hall.
This support, he believes, moves the scholarship winners “from the category of ‘refugee’ to the category of ‘young footballer, young pianist.’ ”
One migration expert has praise for programs like the Lublin scholarships, although he also points out potential obstacles.
“The program has to be very well thought out. It is necessary to take into account the plans of the person in question, including the fact that he or she will want to return to Ukraine at some point,” says Maciej Duszczyk, a professor at the University of Warsaw and a board member at the Center for Migration Research.
For Ukrainians who plan to return at some time, the program’s strength lies in helping them keep up and develop activities they used to pursue before the war.
“Scholarships like this give them the chance to do that,” he adds.
Looking Ahead
While Homo Faber is still seeking funding for a new round of scholarships, some who might have been helped with greater resources have gone away empty-handed. One teenager came to Lublin with a long list of equestrian triumphs back in Ukraine. Her parents even brought horses to Poland, but no trainer with enough experience could be found, Szewczuk says. Eventually, the girl left to seek support in another city. A boy who was studying advanced robotics and winning competitions in the field also could not be matched with a suitable expert.
If Poles are growing less willing to help refugees, as many say, that too could affect the future of the program. The economic woes due in part to the war itself and the high inflation that came in their wake are forcing many to cut back on non-essentials.
A major obstacle, whether for Lublin or other Polish cities and towns now housing from 1.2 million to 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees who have settled in the country, is the lack of a national migration or integration policy, forcing local civic groups and authorities to develop integration programs from the ground up.
For now, only those currently resident in Lublin are eligible to apply for one of the Homo Faber scholarships. Still, news of the program is spreading – some applications have arrived from Warsaw and other cities.
Jaroslawa Szewczuk advises that anyone hoping to follow Lublin’s example try to emulate its success in building ties among city officials and volunteers with community centers, sports clubs, and other venues – as she was able to do in her dual role as a city-employed cultural worker and project volunteer.
For Homo Faber and the volunteers, the next step will be integrate all-Ukrainian activities and groups into the wider city society, through Polish language classes and joint ventures such as Polish-Ukrainian sports teams and musical ensembles.
In less than a year, Lublin’s initiative has made great strides, according to Agnieszka Kosowicz, head of the Polish Migration Forum in Warsaw.
“These young people can develop in what they were best at. This will pay off in the future. Because if someone is a great pianist, he will certainly be more useful to society in the future precisely as a pianist than, for example, as a shop assistant,” Kosowicz comments.
“Their potential will not be wasted.”
…
Lublin-based reporter Anna Gmiterek-Zablocka has more than 20 years’ experience in broadcast journalism. Her coverage of social issues was recognized with a Grand Press Award in 2010.
