Families fleeing from Ukraine arrived in Hungary in droves after February 2022, due to the outbreak of war. The war has been going on for more than two years, but there is still no telling when it will end. The lives of the Ukrainian and Transcarpathian Hungarian families who have settled here have changed radically and face many difficulties, but a large section of Hungarian society has the opposite view.
Where, who and what?
From Street to Home Association (FSHA, in Hungarian ULE) has been working with families who are refugees from Ukraine for almost two and a half years, first in providing solidarity housing offers, and then in a rent subsidy programme. This year, we have launched a communication campaign to show the difficulties and problems faced by refugee families arriving here and the solutions we see to this issue. We help refugee families integrate through social work, community programmes and mentoring groups. The campaign materials we produce with our clients reflect these experiences and aim to change public attitudes in Hungary.
At From Street to Home! Association, we believe that everyone needs a place to call home. Safe housing is an essential condition for a life with dignity. We develop and operate model programs to provide independent housing for people who are homeless and living in housing poverty. We work with local authorities and private individuals, running a social housing network and a housing agency. The number of our residents reached 130 in 2024 and is growing. In addition, since 2022 we have provided rental assistance to over 300 clients who are refugees from Ukraine.
Over the past two years, in addition to housing support, we have been providing social work, community events and peer mentoring training for refugees to help families integrate into society and cope with the trauma of war. However, the perception of refugees in Hungary remains overwhelmingly negative. In our work, both our clients and our social workers are aware of the discrimination, disadvantages and general rejection that refugees face, so we thought it was important to counter stereotypes and disinformation from the central government and to show what it is really like to be a refugee in Hungary.
To this end, we launched our communication campaign in March, with social media posts, a school talk and a roundtable discussion on the experiences of refugees. Our aim was to reach a wider audience through our social media pages (older age group on Facebook, younger age group on Instagram), but we also engaged smaller communities such as a group of vocational college students and participants in an open district event. In addition, we wrote an article with our clients, went on a radio show to talk about it and then published the campaign experience on our website. The content included the legal environment, our clients' experiences in different social, health and educational institutions, and their personal stories. The social media posts (Facebook, Instagram) reached an average of 500-1000 people each and received an average of 40-50 reactions. In total, around 60 people attended the two events, 1000 people have listened to the radio show and 3000 people have read the article. Importantly, the article and the radio programme reached a total of 4,000 people, as they were published in two media that do not focus on the refugee issue, so hopefully reaching a new audience. Importantly for the two talks, one of the talks was with a student organisation that recruits 10-20 new members a year and provides education on social issues. Their feedback was that our training was particularly useful for them, as they had not previously been informed about the social impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The other event was a roundtable discussion in the 8th district of Budapest, where our client Erika, a refugee from Ukraine, spoke about her experiences. Erika is also a member of the ULE's peer mentoring group, helping ULE refugee families in their daily lives, bureaucratic overcoming bureaucratic obstacles and advocacy. She is not the only one who has gone from helping to helping, ULE already has a social helper who also arrived from Ukraine in 2022 and now provides daily support to ULE clients and is involved in community social work.
Details of the project
During the campaign, we had the goal of influencing the mindset of Hungarian society by showcasing the experiences of refugees and our staff in Ukraine. Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more common for people to view refugees in our country with hatred and to question the organisations that help them. Unfortunately, it is not true that refugees receive all the support they need, often without access to basic health, social and educational services. During the campaign, we used our social media pages to showcase the experiences of refugee families in different areas, including housing, health, education and their labour market opportunities. We also felt it was important to show a more personal side to the experiences of the people living here, writing about the community, their outlook and the importance of mental health. We used personal stories to show why the work of NGOs helping refugees is important and what possible solutions we see. All these topics have also been uploaded to our website in a frequently asked questions section, so that we have a ready material to answer questions for members of the disinformed society.
During the project, we also discussed the topic in a peer mentoring group of clients receiving housing assistance from ULÉ, and after reflecting and sharing our experiences, we wrote an article together with them. In the article, we wrote about the complexity of the legal situation of refugees in Hungary and the many pitfalls faced by the poorer Transcarpathian Hungarians with dual citizenship, similar to the topics listed above. Unfortunately, the refugees living here are fully exposed to the government's decisions and could lose out on the few services they are entitled to at any time. In the article, we described in detail the experiences of Ukrainian refugees living in Hungary, which has had a positive impact on them too, as the daily hatred towards them is very bad for their mental health, making it even harder for them to deal with their traumas.
These experiences were shared in two talks and a radio programme, reaching out to other social groups and people.
Challenges
We started the campaign by sharing our posts on our social media pages, where, as in our previous experience, we were met with a lot of hateful comments and reactions. Unfortunately, this initially discouraged us and our customers who participated in the campaign. After a brief rethink, we eventually continued to publish short stories and educational text, toning down the personal stories for a while and sharing purely facts and experiences. The difficulty remains, as our articles and radio show were published in media and live interviews where the audience is already receptive and interested in the lives of refugees, and is in solidarity and empathy with them. We hope that we have reached many people who are now no longer neutral on the issue and are speaking out against discrimination against refugees in their immediate and wider communities.
Achievements and impact
For us, the biggest positive aspect of the campaign was the cooperation with refugee families and fellow mentors. While the association's staff all know the experience of refugees, working together we felt an even stronger trust develop between the team. We all learned a lot from their experiences and the injustices they face on a daily basis. We are proud that these experiences will be visible on our website in the long term, and that more and more of our colleagues and supporters will be able to respond to the hate. The article we wrote together was read by 3000 people in just a few days, which for us is a very affirming response to the fact that there are few reliable sources on refugees in Hungary so far. The whole process built the confidence of our refugee clients based on the feedback and gave them more confidence to speak out and take action against fake news in this country.
What is the most important element and worth remembering about this Local Action Plan?
We think it is particularly important today to confront the misconceptions in society and to present the truth. Many groups in society are discriminated against because, in addition to the difficulties they face, they are also being hyped up by the media and misinformed. The most important thing is to channel the experience of the social group concerned, in this case the Ukrainian refugees, and to influence people through their own stories. Unfortunately, most of the social institutions in which refugees' rights are violated do not provide sufficient assistance to Hungarian society, and we would like to draw attention to this as well.
Conclusion
As well as helping more than 300 refugee clients to live in a safe home on a daily basis, we believe it is vital to have an awareness-raising role. We can support refugees' lives in the long term by making a difference at a national level, which requires the support of society. And to do this, it is essential that we actively communicate and advocate for them, and show through real stories the hardships and injustices they face. It is also important to showcase good practices and solutions.
Call to action
To combat disinformation, it is vital that more people share their own stories and speak out against the injustices faced by refugees in Ukraine. The questions and answers on our website will help anyone interested to get the facts about the situation in Hungary and to learn about what is really happening through human experience.
References
Credits: Photo by Ganna Prangova
About ULE
At From Street to Home! (ULE) We believe that everyone needs a place to call home. Safe housing is essential for a life with dignity. We develop and operate model programs to provide independent housing for people who are homeless or living in housing poverty. We also aim to promote this by introducing and supporting innovative housing policy tools. We aim to actively participate in the national roll-out of the Housing First methodology.
www.utcarollakasba.hu/about-us/