Ukrainian Friendship Meetings

The Club  hosts fortnightly Friendship Evenings for our local Ukrainian Refugees.  They are held in the St. Ives Corn Exchange Coffee Shop - providing the perfect occasion for our Ukrainian guests to meet up and to chat in their own language, over a cup of coffee and a snack.  HDC provide an interpreter, and our own volunteer English Language teachers help out with the language as well.  There are about 30 families living in the St Ives area.

Clothes and household items are available, as well as electrical goods and  laptops, from the donations we receive from club members, friends and other residents who want to help.  The people of St Ives are very generous! 

And wonderful evenings they are proving to be, as contacts are exchanged, concerns eased and friendships made.  

The Mayor, Councillor Philip Pope, came along to the first meeting to welcome the guests and assure them of the town's support and friendship.

Meeting up and making friends is much needed for the thousands of displaced Ukrainian guests here in the UK, most of whom are young mothers, separated from their husbands, friends and family. Their normal social contacts may well be still in Ukraine, living in a war-torn land in unimaginable conditions. Their husbands may even be fighting on the front line. Split between host families all over the area, and dependent on their hosts for transport, they had no idea where the other Ukrainians lived and no way to meet up with them.  

Companionship with others who speak the same language and understand their plight is an area of support that many Local Authorities are not currently providing, relying on Voluntary Organisations, such as Rotary, to organise - and one which St. Ives Rotary Club is proud to support.