House of Europe redirects funding for emergency response to Russia’s war against Ukraine

The EU-funded ‘House of Europe’ programme, which promotes professional and creative exchanges between Ukrainians and their counterparts in the EU and the UK, has redirected funding to emergency support, gathered hundreds of opportunities for displaced people and focused on creating new support schemes to address wartime challenges.

Before the war, the programme focused on culture and creative industries, education, health, social enterprise, media, and youth. Now ‘House of Europe’ provides emergency support to its beneficiaries and organisations working in related fields. The programme has supported the people risking their lives to save the unique cultural heritage in Ukraine.

Twenty-five museums from Lviv, Odesa, Kyiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Sumy, and Mykolaiv regions received €137,184 to protect their collections.

One hundred members of the project’s Alumni Community received €1,000 each. Those who are safe and eager to get back to work can spend the stipends to restart their activities. For those who have lost their jobs or even more, necessities such as housing, food, medicine and fuel can be paid for.

The programme has also invited professionals and organisations that have won its grants and have not yet implemented their projects in full, to spend the money on emergency support and countering Russian aggression. Continuing the project as planned or updating it slightly is also an option.

In addition, ’House of Europe’ supports its partners involved in evacuations of citizens, safeguarding of cultural heritage, volunteering, and other life-saving operations across Ukraine. Their teams got 75 sets of protective and medical kits. The project also continually collects various opportunities: scholarships, anticrisis stipends, residencies, grants, courses, accomodation, opportunities, compilations of free books and contacts of psychologists. All useful information is regularly published on the programme’s social media pages – on Facebook and Telegram.