Today, Sunday, my third day volunteering at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Przemyśl Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center. Today we have about half a dozen kids in the space. There are two volunteers working, Agnes and I. Agnes is from a city in the north of Poland, near the Black Sea. She arrived on Friday evening, after a 12-hour train ride. Agnes will be staying in Przemyśl until next Sunday. This is her second tour — she was here for a week in July as well. She tells me that during that week in July, the children’s safe space was hosting on average about 100 kids per day.
Agnes is busily studying both Ukrainian and Russian in her spare time, because she wants to be able to freely talk with all the Ukrainian people she meets. She hopes someday once the war ends to go to Ukraine to help with reconstruction and resettlement work. She is studying Russian because she’s discovered that quite a few of the Ukrainians she meets at the Przemyśl aid center speak Russian rather than Ukrainian.