Our goal with the presented communication campaign is to aid in fact-based awareness by presenting credible information regarding the internally displaced persons living in Ukraine, particularly in the country's poorest region, Transcarpathia. The "Medical Help Where Needed" – MedSpot Foundation provides care for families living as internally displaced persons in the hinterland of the Russian-Ukrainian war, in and around Uzhhorod, Transcarpathia. In the communication campaign, we present the lives, mental burdens of the internally displaced persons, and the work of our team.

What we have done?

For over a year and a half, the doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists of our foundation have been treating people suffering from various acute and chronic diseases, including many children, and monitoring the mental/psychological state of the internally displaced persons. A significant portion of the refugees suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, which the already struggling state care system of the war-torn country is unable to handle.

Public attention is increasingly waning, and the communication appearing in the media fosters hostile attitudes toward Ukrainians. In this media space, it is important for us to present firsthand information and thus strengthen public sympathy.

The issue of internally displaced persons living in Ukraine is not well-known in Hungary. Furthermore, public attention regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war is waning – a natural process in the case of a prolonged conflict. However, the balance of real facts is not necessarily maintained for domestic media consumers, which is why we find it necessary to provide information from credible locations and situations.

Our goal is to reduce the war trauma and help the current internally displaced persons to start rebuilding their lives in the best possible mental state after the war, with particular attention to the long-term effects of war known from medical perspectives.

For us, firsthand information is the most credible source. This is why we have created videos and interviews with Ukrainian refugees and our specialists providing care for them, to give a complete picture of the current conditions, attitudes, and facts observable from February 2024 onwards. Additionally, we conducted research among refugees stranded in the hinterland. Today, 3.5 million people live as internally displaced persons in Ukraine, away from their homes – many of which no longer exist – often in emergency shelters. Among them, a small town’s worth of people are in Eastern Ukraine, in Transcarpathia.

During the project, we made five visits to Transcarpathia, filming five short films and conducting five interviews in and around Uzhhorod, and we also carried out a survey. The interviews and short films were made with internally displaced persons, staff from the local civil organization collaborating on the project (Western Unity), and volunteer psychologists from the MedSpot Foundation. The survey examined the economic and labor market situation, as well as the mental and health status of the refugees living in refugee shelters in and around Uzhhorod, with questions for which domestic data are also available, making it possible to compare the situation of the refugees with the situation in Hungary for the domestic public.

The created materials are available on the "Inherited Traumas" page (page is in Hungarian, but the short films have English subtitles). Through a media campaign built on the completed materials, we are currently trying to familiarize the domestic public with the situation of the internally displaced persons as widely as possible.

Challenges and achievements

The implementation of the project did not pose significant difficulties for us, thanks to our many years of experience and our excellent Ukrainian partner organization, Western Unity. Only in the case of the questionnaire data collection did we need some persuasion, but ultimately, we received a sufficient number of responses thanks to our local helpers.

However, for those who may be organizing a support program in Ukraine for the first time, it is worth preparing for some difficulties. The first challenge is crossing the border. Even reaching the border is not always simple: if a significant aid shipment is arriving, the road may be temporarily closed, and crossing for freight traffic is slow, resulting in long queues of waiting trucks. Although a visa is not required to enter Ukraine, if you are bringing aid, it must be prepared according to its contents. At the border, the length of the procedure depends on the customs officers and border guards on duty, ranging from a few minutes to several hours.

Another difficulty is psychological. Ukrainians' perception of Hungary is not very positive due to foreign policy conflicts. Consequently, even if someone is bringing aid, they may often face suspicion. Only time and informal conversations can alleviate this.

During the project, we created and promoted a webpage showcasing the situation of internally displaced persons in Ukraine, featuring five short films, five interviews, and a research report. As a result of the promotion, the materials reached approximately 30,000 views. An article about the project’s research appeared in Telex.hu, one of the most-read electronic media outlets.

Although we cannot yet measure the actual impact, we hope that we have managed to draw attention to the situation of internally displaced persons living in Transcarpathia and to make people understand that these persons in need are going through traumas that are hard for us to imagine. We have tried to make people see and feel the difficult-to-process experiences which people, fleeing the war, are going through, without any hope of returning to their homes, often alone or without the head of their family, with elderly relatives and small children, arrive in a part of the country without acquaintances or friends, where there is little chance of self-support or of finding appropriate employment in the middle of a war. We have made people to see how vulnerable those persons are - adults, the elderly and children - who, in their loss of ground, express their pain burdened by mental distress in physical symptoms, in chronic and acute illnesses, since words get stuck where there is lot of mental stress and strain. We have shown how the health system in a war-torn country, on the verge of collapse and focusing on fighting, can be difficult or unable to care for the seriously ill, chronic patients for whom regular medical care and medication are a matter of life and death. At the same time, we also see - and we hope that we were able to show - how grateful the refugees we have been serving and providing for more than a year and a half are, as their quality of life has been changed by the medical care and psychological support we have provided. In addition, among the people living in these refugee shelters, where the medical and psychological support of MedSpot has been realised, in our perception both adults' and children's visions of the future have changed - emerged or turned in a positive direction - which is essential for the short and long-term mental recovery and for processing the expected intergenerational trauma. These people would not have spoken to us and given their consent to be interviewed if the TRUST on which our connection is based had not been built, and if they had not perceived the mental difference between them and the newcomers from the war zone. Internally displaced people from the war zone are severely broken, on the one hand, due to the trauma they have experienced, and on the other hand, due to the news and commentaries communicating the actions of Hungarian politicians. This is the starting point for our support for each new family and refugee shelter. However, it is also clear that in this difficult situation, the mental and/or physical wounds are not primarily shared with us by these people who are living in an extremely vulnerable situation. In fact, they do not want to share them with anyone at all. Not until they understand that this is the only way that can help them free themselves from the burden of difficult thoughts.

To achieve all the above, thoughtful and regular presence, persistent and often self-sacrificing work is necessary. We give people real help when we wait patiently for our actions to prove themselves. Trust is not built quickly, but it is quickly lost if words are not followed by real actions. Month after month, our foundation has made the refugees feel that we are not letting go of their hands, that we are listening to their requests relating to their health. We have made it exactly clear of how far we can go in human, physical and mental/spiritual support and where we reach the point which is beyond our capabilities. In this way, there were no unrealistic expectations from the people served, but trust and gratitude were developed during the not easy journey together that defines being a refugee. Of course, all of this involved a lot of organisational work (purchasing medicines, obtaining licences and permits, fundraising, organising interpreters, etc.), but the MedSpot medical team never made a single move to make the patients feel that this would be a difficulty. It was just enough for them to experience their own situation, as they went from crowded gymnasiums with no privacy through two or three intermediate temporary accommodations and then, a year later, at least to a separate apartment/room per family facility converted from school classrooms. We therefore recommend patience, a firm goal and perseverance to all volunteers working on similar projects.

This project would not have been realised without the support of TechSoup. Thank you!

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