At his last visit in the region of Toretsk, project coordinator Friedrich Machein actually expected bright faces amongst the staff of the medical station in the village of Kurdimovka. The team of arche noVa had recently installed a new heating system there. But the opposite was true. When he got out of the car he could hear the nurse and the janitor in a heated discussion. “I couldn’t understand a word of this loud conversation as I don’t speak Russian”, Machein remembers.
The problem was explained quickly: The diameter of the chimney was too small so the station’s staff didn’t dare to turn on the heating system. Friedrich Machein states: “A heating without a chimney is like a car without wheels”. So his co-worker, arche noVa’s project engineer, called the local heating installer. For a good price he quickly delivered a bigger flue. Now the station could finally be heated again and get back to work disregarding the freezing temperatures below zero outside. The village’s nurse tries as best as she can to keep up the health supply for the inhabitants. Since February 2014 the armed conflict keeps raging, most medics and nurses have fled the war-afflicted territory.
For the ones who stayed daily life is exhausting, especially in the harsh winter months. The ongoing fights have destroyed the infrastructure and maintenance works cannot be kept up in the war zone. Now in winter many buildings stay unheated. For the teaching in the schools to go on and for kindergartens and medical stations to keep working, arche noVa has set up a winter aid program in cooperation with Unicef. 60 schools in the region of Luhansk received heating plants. Additionally the workers of arche noVa installed generators and water heaters in healthcare facilities, kindergartens and schools and distributed charcoal.
The people in the Eastern Ukraine have established their lives meagerly despite constant bombardments and shelling. Even though the conflict nearly has been forgotten, 3.4 million people are still in need of Humanitarian Help. arche noVa reconstructs destroyed official buildings, rehabilitates water system and improves the sanitary supply in the region of Donetsk in the governmental controlled areas. Further we support the civil society in the supply and integration of the masses that have fled within the country.
