The Red Cross Luxembourg has set up a hotline to help house refugees with families in Luxembourg.

The email () is part of a multi-organisational hotline, between the Luxembourg Red Cross, Caritas and ASTI, which has the support of the ministry for family and integration. The hotline can also be reached by phone (+352 621 796 780). 

The Red Cross tells Delano the most efficient way to volunteer for this scheme is through an online form https://forms.office.com/r/zG4sZqtbhn.

Once volunteers have completed the form they are contacted by either the Red Cross or Caritas and met by the NGOs. This allows the organisations to verify the information and to discuss the commitment the volunteers are undertaking.

“Welcoming ‘strangers’ into your home is very generous, and it should not become a burden... after the trauma of having to leave their country, we do not want them to be forced to move from one accommodation to another every week. Ideally, we ask that people can stay at the locations for at least three months,” the organisation explains.

Another reason for meeting volunteers, the NGO says, is to, get to know the host families and better ‘match’ them with the families who will be accommodated. “So that they can get along and live together in the best possible way… It is a ‘family’ welcome, and we must try to find the most favourable ‘configurations’ possible.”

Host families will accommodate people who have made an official request for international protection.

“Accommodation is done on a voluntary basis: there is no compensation provided for the people who host,” the humanitarian organisation stresses. “It is an act of pure solidarity: we can only thank and bow to those who offer to share their roof with people who have lost everything.”

The hotline was launched on March 8 and received 400 housing proposals in the first evening.

There will also be some medical follow-ups, for those displaced by the conflict in Ukraine. They will be afforded treatment and also psychological support to help them come to terms with having to abandon everything they once knew and loved, including, in some cases, their family. “There is an ongoing discussion to put in place the tools necessary for this support. Faced with the emergency, solutions are sought and constructed as they arise... there is nothing concrete today, but the ministries and administrations concerned are working on it, and there will certainly be things to announce in the near future.”

How the Luxembourg Red Cross is helping on the ground in Ukraine

The Luxembourg Red Cross has also released €350,000 to support the emergency team in Ukraine.

The funds are to be used to by personnel in Ukraine to help both internally displaced Ukrainians and all those who have remained behind. The Red Cross Luxembourg is also working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Ukrainian Red Cross teams. 

In Kyiv, the NGO reports that at least 8,000 people are taking refuge in metro entrances and have been delivered a total of 10 tons of food and water.

30,000 people, including people with disabilities have been evacuated. Hygiene kits, food and warm clothes have also been distributed.

More than 50 lives were saved thanks to the care of the injured and their transport to hospitals from February 23 to 28.

And 2,000 volunteers have been trained via first aid teams -- the Red Cross Luxembourg also reveals, “the number of volunteers joining the ranks of the Ukrainian Red Cross continues to increase.”

Further to the humanitarian assistance, the Red Cross is helping evacuate a village in Kramastorsk, situated in the northen region of Donetsk which has been 80% destroyed in the ongoing war. The most vulnerable are stranded with no means of transport.

Evacuated citizens have been moved to a reception centre for internally displaced people in Svetagorsk which the Luxembourg Red Cross had renovated in 2014 when the war began.

Medical equipment was distributed to the Torestsk hospital, also in Donestsk on the weekend of March 4 to 6, including food for children and hygiene products.

While volunteers of the Benelux Emergency Response Unit of the Luxembourg Red Cross are preparing to intervene in the countries bordering Ukraine, with the aim of welcoming refugees who are arriving in their hundreds of thousands.

In the coming days, the Luxembourg Red Cross is expected to open an office in Moldova.