“Kindness is the golden chain that holds society together”
Goethe.
🚗Our mobile #SafeSpace team met Rimma two years ago. We came to meet with people displaced from Ukraine in one of the cities in the north of Moldova.
💬During the conversation, the woman told her story. Before the war started, she lived in eastern Ukraine with her five children. Rimma separated from her husband due to domestic violence. The woman raised and educated the children alone. In her hometown, she had a decent job, a house and friends. She was actively involved in social activities, helping women who were subjected to domestic violence. The war began and, saving the children and herself, Rimma had to leave her home with great difficulty, under bombardments and the roar of sirens, to make her way to the border with Moldova.
🇦🇩Arriving in the territory of Moldova, with the help of volunteers, he found a home. Thus began a new phase in Rimma’s life. We have been meeting this heroine mother for two years! During this time, her children have integrated into the new society, go to school and communicate with new friends. Rimma is a member of the school’s parent committee.
📍She actively participates in the life of Ukrainians in the city where they live. She is always happy to come to a meeting with our mobile team. During this time, she attended Romanian language courses, together with an activist group of Ukrainian women, which she created, and organized the “Club of Ukrainian Women”, which helps each other and accepts newly arrived refugees from Ukraine.
💭Recently, with joy, Rimma shared the news that they got permission for their club to rent spaces where they can spend time, events, meetings and where everyone who needs support can come. According to Rimma, only this socially useful activity, at least for a while, distracts him from thoughts about the war. Of course, the anxiety and worry about the relatives and friends who remained in Ukraine, the pain and fear for her people do not leave Rimma.
💬 “Sometimes, when I talk to her, I see tears of despair in her eyes,” the psychologist of the mobile team tells us.
But as Rimma herself says: “I live here and now and I want to be useful to people who need me, I can’t be weak, I’m a mother, my family and friends need me.”
With great gratitude, Rimma conveys her words of thanks to all the members of our #SafeSpace mobile team from the Artemida Public Association, the UNFPA Moldova organization, for being there all the time, for meetings, for sincerity and sensitivity, for support.
💬 “Meetings with this strong woman always fill us with faith that a person can overcome all difficulties if there is a goal and someone to live for,” the social worker from the mobile team tells us.
🟠We are convinced that only together through consolidated joint efforts, we will face the challenges.
