For Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw

Who are we?

We are the Amazon accounting team in Poland, mainly based in Warsaw.

In addition to supporting Amazon’s large-scale humanitarian initiatives, we in the Amazon accounting team in Poland are engaged in local community initiatives in our neighbourhoods supporting the refugees. We help buy items that are needed here and now, delivering super flexible and agile response to the incoming refugees settling in our neighborhoods.

Why we collect cash?

As we are writing this, there are already over 2 million refugees from Ukraine who have crossed the Polish border. Thousands of them are coming to Warsaw and staying here temporarily before moving on to the next stop in their journey in wider Poland or abroad, or settling here and are becoming our new neighbors.

People in the neighborhoods are coming together to organize the most needed support for them locally. It is often organized by people with kind hearts and free time, but without limitless financial resources.  There are so many different forms of assistance that local communities are providing to help our guests and new neighbors:

• Organizing impromptu ‘free shops’ that collect and hand out donations
• Providing catering for people queuing, often all day, in line in refugee registration centers, local authorities or even Ukrainian consulate that is located in Warsaw’s Mokotow district, where Gosia, Kuba and Dorota live (remember they are not going to hop to Starbucks to buy $5 coffee!)
• Directly helping families in the neighborhoods who host refugees in their homes with donations but also with arranging for administrative help and child care
• Organizing Polish language classes
•  Looking for possible employment quickly which often means local and temporary but is a good start to building local relationships with the new neighbors

Pictures below: Backpacks for kids and clothes in ‘free shop’ 

Often demand exceeds what this grassroot support can do. Like in the case of Aid Centre Pulawska 20 (Centrum Pomocy Pulawska 20) where Dorota volunteers. This is a place that started as a free shop for refugees, organized from scratch in just few days by the local community, and now supports DAILY more than 500 people, mainly women with children, who first came to the free shop for clothes, cosmetics, buggies but now also for bedding, crockery to fit out their new homes or non-perishable food items to stock their new pantries. 

Recently the center has been collecting and handing out school stuff, and art and craft materials as the children get admissions to local schools. The needs are constantly changing (even as the season changes from winter to spring). The center finishes every day with a list of needs, often newly identified based on what the refugees are asking for. For example, recently kids have been asking for scooters as they see their classmates ride to school.

Our Polish accounting team strongly feels part of the local community. We want to help as much as possible, and this cash collection will give us flexibility to address dynamically changing local needs. 

Pictures: This is Dorota volunteering in “shoes section” 

How does it work?

We initiated this collection to gather funds from our families and friends that we will use to buy what’s needed here and now in our local neighborhoods. These needs change rapidly – one day food is needed, another day toys, or maybe by the time this collection closes the basic needs will be filled and we’ll be able to direct some funds  to buy the scooters so that the Ukrainian children can ride to school alongside their new Polish classmates  

We plan to keep collection open till mid-April. We will transfer all funds collected to bank account of Polish accounting team member. We will then identify what’s the most needed in our local community, arrange any logistics locally in Warsaw and deliver goods directly to people who need them the most, our new Ukrainian neighbors.

Feel free to join our collection. We thank you for any donation you can make. We will share results of this initiative later in April.

Huge thanks!

Polish accounting team