The Estonian Refugee Council will celebrate World Refugee Day on June 20th from 12 to 4pm at Telliskivi Creative City as a community festival, supporting all refugees who have had to leave their homes.

In April 2024, ERC provided multi-purpose cash assistance to 8,600 conflict-affected individuals in front-line and hard-to-reach areas in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhia oblasts. In April, the Empowering Women entrepreneurship programme in Estonia was concluded, during which 15 teams received support to refine their business ideas. In Ukraine, we continued to support the 50 women-led businesses that participated in the Empowering Women group last year through mentoring and asset-based grants. In Estonia, nearly 1000 people have already participated in our community activities this year. We presented our experience with the entrepreneurship program for women with refugee backgrounds at the International Knowledge Platform conference in the Netherlands. In April, we collected over 13 000 euros in donations. Thank you!

We opened a portrait exhibition titled "Voices from Crises: Stories of Displaced People" on Monday, April 15th at Kolme puu gallery in Telliskivi Creative City.We opened an Estonian Refugee Council office in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

This season we provided winterization support to nearly 16,000 vulnerable households in Ukraine. We carried out a shelter programme in Ukraine, supporting the light repairs of a total of 200 war-torn residential houses.

The legacy of the territorial conflicts that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union remains a daily reality for hundreds of thousands of families displaced in their wake.

At the beginning of February, the Estonian Refugee Council's team handed over four generators to the local governments in East of Ukraine, the purchase of which was supported by Estonian donors in the campaign "Give Spark". The generators help to keep the critical infrastructure of the municipalities close to the frontline running ("points of invincibility") and allow the locals to charge communication devices in case of emergency.