On 3 June 2024, a monitoring group from the Lviv Agrarian Chamber visited the state educational institution ‘Pochaiv Higher Vocational School’, which participates in the UN World Food Programme’s Institutional Food Programme and is currently providing shelter to 15 people displaced from the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Representatives of the monitoring group inspected the food preparation facilities and the warehouse where food is stored, and spoke with the people receiving assistance. The people’s feedback was emotional and heartfelt.
“We have been receiving food through this programme for several months now and, of course, it helps a great deal. In the first months of the war, many organisations were providing humanitarian aid, but later, as we were told, funding was cut, aid was significantly reduced and, in the end, only your programme remained.
This programme allows us to make tangible savings on food; clearly, given the size of pensions, this becomes a critically important factor. But most importantly, it brings a certain stability to life, at least the certainty that we are not facing starvation. In wartime, even this somehow boosts one’s morale. “I believe this is a very important matter,” said Ms Svitlana Shakhmato from Kramatorsk.
Ihor Vuytsyk, Head of the Lviv Agrarian Chamber, during a meeting with people receiving humanitarian aid, highlighted the important mission of the UN World Food Programme. In particular, he noted that before the war began, Ukrainians knew little about UN humanitarian programmes. There was practically no need for them, so interest in this information was extremely low. In 2014, everything changed. As a result of Russia’s aggressive actions, tens of thousands of people found themselves at the epicentre of a humanitarian disaster.
24 February 2022 became perhaps the darkest day in the modern history of independent Ukraine. On this day, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale war against our country. Destroyed infrastructure, a collapsing economy, millions of displaced people – a huge number of people found themselves on the brink of survival.
Almost from the very first days of the war, the UN deployed numerous humanitarian aid missions in Ukraine, and one of the most important of these is the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
Today, this organisation is active in many areas across Ukraine. One of these areas is the Institutional Feeding Programme. In the Lviv and Ternopil regions, this Programme is being implemented by the WFP’s cooperating partner in Ukraine – the Lviv Agrarian Chamber, which has taken on the significant task of logistics, distribution and delivery of long-life food products to institutions caring for internally displaced persons, people with disabilities and orphans. Food is currently delivered to over 170 institutions, with 15,000 people receiving this assistance directly every month. In just six months this year, the Lviv Agrarian Chamber team has received and distributed almost 500 tonnes of foodstuffs among partner institutions in these two regions, which are subsequently used to prepare meals for those in need.
Thus, the programme is primarily aimed at ensuring a stable and adequate food supply for the most vulnerable sections of the population. Needless to say, this is crucial given today’s realities, where millions of internally displaced persons have been left without any means of subsistence. It is no surprise that the UN WFP and its partner, the Lviv Agrarian Chamber, have become a beacon of hope for many people who, due to the war, find themselves in difficult circumstances and in need of protection and assistance.
Source: Lviv Agrarian Chamber