October 6, 2022
News
Lilia Yarova is a widow from Kyiv, Ukraine. She was forced to leave her home and a job in the capital because of the war. Together with her daughter, they found refuge in the Lviv region. Thanks to the financial support from Caritas Czech Republic, Lilia can afford to send her daughter to school.
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Life in a new place
As thousands of other Ukrainians, Lilia left Kyiv on February 24th. The bombing woke her up at 5 o’clock in the morning. She woke her daughter Anna-Maria, took her dog, and an alarming suitcase with documents, and drove to the western part of the country. They were driving to the Lviv region for two days.
Life in the new place was hard at first. The family was dependent on humanitarian help for all their basic needs. Lilia is raising her daughter alone because her husband died of a serious illness a year ago. They fought for his life with stage 4 cancer for two and a half years. They even took him abroad for treatment. But he is gone.
Now Lilia is trying to ensure that her daughter receives a proper education. When the family lived in Kyiv, Lilia had a good job. She was the deputy director of agricultural enterprises. But because of the war, she has lost her job. And all their savings were spent on her husband’s treatment.
Now she and her daughter are living in a dormitory in the Lviv region. They have one tiny room for both of them. “We share the bathroom with neighbours from another room. And we have a kitchen for five families. Everything is fine, we are not complaining,” Lilia says.
Return to normal life
In July, Lilia started working for the local Caritas organisation in Drohobych city as a crisis manager. “I am very happy that I can help people like me: to advise them, provide them with preliminary help, refer them to other specialists. I am very glad that I can be useful to Ukraine at such a hard time.”
Now that Lilia has a job, she can provide her family with food and other basic needs. But her daughter is still a student. And she needs extra money for her studies as well. Thanks to the financial support provided by Caritas Czech Republic, 18-years- old Anna-Maria will have the resources to pay for her education, studying equipment, and English courses. The young girl wants to become a computer analyst so she will need to be able to speak English well in order to find a proper job.
“This financial support will help us a lot because I am raising a child alone. And I should provide her with a good education. So, thank you very much for helping me with that,” Lilia says gratefully.
We provide cash assistance to the most vulnerable people thanks to the financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Trocaire, and Irish aid, and in cooperation with our partner organisation Caritas Ukraine.
