A Memorandum with the Danish Council Is Signed

Today Chairman of the Board of the State Fund for Support of Youth Housing Construction Serhii Komnatnyi and Director of the Representation Office of the Danish Refugee Council in Ukraine (DRC) Krista Zongolowicz have signed the Memorandum on Partnership and Cooperation between the State Fund for Support of Youth Housing Construction and the DRC representation in our state.

First Deputy Chairman of the Board Ivan Parukh, Deputy Chairman of the Board Elvira Levchenko and the experts of the Danish Council took part in the meeting.

The cooperation of the parties will be directed at planning, development and realization of concept notes and projects on the creation of mechanisms of providing IDPs and conflict affected people with housing.

In the course of signing it was mentioned that joint activities and implementation of international projects will facilitate the execution of tasks standing before the Fund and DRC. This is the protection of legal rights of forcibly displaced persons, first of all.

Since now the Danish Council has found a new partner in Ukraine for the realization of joint programmes, - Ms. Zongolowicz mentioned during the Memorandum’s signing.

Mr. Komnatnyi emphasized, in his turn, that the majority of states are solving the housing issue of the displaced persons based on the cooperation with international partners. Such practice would be useful for Ukraine too.

The Danish Council’s representatives were presented the project proposals developed by the experts of the State Fund for Support of Youth Housing Construction. These proposals are based on the possibility of involvement of extra-budgetary sources of financing of housing programmes envisaged by the Fund’s Articles of Association. In particular, it goes about such projects:

 -         Implementation concept of Project “Providing of the Most Unprotected Strata of Society with Housing By Means of Giving Them Support at the Expense of Involved Grant Resources”.

-         Implementation concept of Project “Providing of the Most Unprotected Strata of Society with Housing By Means of Granting Them a Soft Loan at the Expense of Involved Grant Resources”.

 -         Implementation concept of Project “Construction of Housing for IDPs – Members of Cooperative “Garden Partnership ”MALI DUBLIANY”.

Informing new international partners about the main provisions of the proposals, Serhii Komnatnyi mentioned that the Fund is open for everybody willing to get involved into the discussion and implementation of projects aimed at providing of the Ukrainian citizens with adequate, decent and affordable housing.

Reference. The Danish Refugee Council (including the Danish Demining Group too) is a non-governmental humanitarian organization, founded in 1956 in response to the European refugee crises caused by the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Today the Danish Refugee Council works in more than 30 countries around the world, with humanitarian programmes.

DRC has been active in large scale humanitarian projects around the world. Through convoy operations DRC was responsible for delivering half of the international humanitarian aid in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the wars of independence in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

 It is one of the central humanitarian actors in Syria and the neighboring countries.

 The Danish Refugee Council worked in Ukraine between 1998-2000 and 2007-2013 when main directions of its activities were returning of deported Crimean Tatars from Asia Minor to the Crimea and improving of work of authorities and civil society with children-refugees.

After the military aggression of Russia towards Ukraine started the Council restarted its activities in Ukraine to help overcome the humanitarian crisis this time.

The mission of DRC-DDG in Ukraine is to promote protection and durable solutions to the IDPs problems based on humanitarian principles and human rights. The organization is working on the Government Controlled Territory in Ukraine. Together with other humanitarian organizations, it works upon getting access to the dwellers of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are Uncontrolled Government Territory now. Today organization works in Kyiv, Dnipro, Mariupol, Sloviansk and Sievierodonetsk.