Ex-Forest pupil pupil Simon helps Ukrainian refugees refugees in Poland
A FORMER pupil at The Forest School in Winnersh is on the front line of efforts to help Ukrainian refugees.
Simon Gill has lived in Poland since the early 1990s and has spent the past 30 years working in crisis situations.
Now, he is working in his home town of Serock, north of Warsaw, to help people who have fled the conflict in Ukraine. He is also fundraising for a Polish charity, Żywiecka Fundacja Rozwoju or Żywiec Development Foundation.
“I fell for a Polish girl and moved here after completing a MSc in agricultural economics,” Simon says.
“I started working on humanitarian aid programmes funded by the US government, which became the springboard for my life since.
“I have worked post-conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo, and on rebuilding projects after natural disasters like the Marmara earthquake in 1999 and the floods in central Europe in 2013.
“A Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs project with refugees in Georgia led me to get involved with the foundation.”
Żywiec Development Foundation is helping to support some of the 2,300,000 Ukrainians — 1,000,000 of whom are children — who have arrived in Poland. Serock’s population of just over 4,000 people has grown by 800.
Simon and his family have been acting as a transit home for refugees since early March. He is part of a group staffing a help point in the town, and a group of British people living in Poland who run refugee support projects across the country.
He explains that the group’s projects include finding and renovating accommodation, therapy for children, refugee transport, food banks and even a rugby team.
“But all of this costs money, and the foundation was kind enough to organise separate accounts for our use so we can arrange things quickly,”
“I ran two Facebook fundraising appeals, which bought in £5,000, and other efforts mean that so far we have raised around £28,000.
“All of that money has already been assigned or spent, and we always need more.”
Funds are spent on housing costs for refugees, buying food for Serock food bank, stocks of essential clothing — which include more than 300 sets of underwear, socks and school shoes — and providing breakfast for two weeks to a group of 50 children who had just arrived in Warsaw. The group also runs activities for children, including trips, choirs, and sports clubs.
“Finchley Rugby Club gave us money to buy some equipment, and a Warsaw club comes to play with the kids in
Serock on Saturdays,” Simon says.
“And when we visit shelters and get them to sing and they start smiling, it’s really emotional.”
It is not always easy or fun.
“Seeing exhibition centres with thousands of beds for Ukrainians to rest up before they move on to more secure and safer housing is hard,” he says.
“It’s heartbreaking seeing a train coming into a central station with thousands of homeless people on board.
“It’s not fun when you encounter a wife or mother coping with the news that a husband or a father has been killed.
“It’s not fun when you have a wave of covid in one of the big shelters and there are several hundred ill on camp beds.”
Simon says that his he is “proud and humbled” to be working alongside Poles managing the arrival of so many people into their country, largely without intervention from the Polish government.
“Generally the mood in Poland is good, but we cannot afford to keep this up for much longer,” he says.
“Ukrainians are not going home quickly, especially those from Kharkiv or Mariopol or Sumy.
“We cannot send them back to live in rubble or tents, we have to now think long term.”
■ For more information, visit: zfr.org.pl or follow Simon on Facebook: facebook. com/SimoninPoland