Humanitarian Relief in Northern Europe

With the blessings of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, SSSIO members in Ukraine and Zone 7 (Northern Europe) are supporting and helping refugees fleeing from war-torn Ukraine. Many people are sheltering in western Ukraine, fleeing from Kiev and the eastern areas.

Between March 14-21, 2022, SSSIO relief activities were focused in the cities of Dnipro and Pavlohrad. Many refugees who stayed with SSSIO members, and in hostels and apartments, were given food, clothes, basic necessities, and medicines.

The SSSIO of Zone 7 established the SharingLove project to help Ukrainian civilians, first-line defenders, and others. With financial assistance from SSSIO worldwide, the volunteers could render much-needed services effectively and in time.

From the beginning, after daily discussions and prayers, SSSIO members went to work, providing food and supplies at refugee centers. For example, many different types of food and supplies were offered at a relief center in a school in Pavlohrad. Food was also delivered several times a week to a dormitory where 67 people, including 14 children, from Volnovakha, Izyum, Severodonetsk and Kharkiv were staying.

The Sathya Sai group in Dnipro prepared and served 250-300 hot meals daily, including salads and baked goods.  

Bravely, one Sathya Sai member ferried refugees in his private car from Mariupol, where they had been isolated without light, water, heat or food for several weeks.

Separately, a group of doctors from the SSSIO of Kiev moved to Poltava to volunteer at the local hospital. SSSIO members provided them with medicines and supplies which were not available in Ukraine.

On March 18, the Sathya Sai Groups of Vinnytsia and Kharkiv supplied 40 packs – each containing 40 diapers – to the Regional Perinatal Center in Vinnitsa. These items were hard to find and much appreciated by the medical staff.

On March 21, the SSSIO conducted a citywide search for medicines for the surgical department of the Pirogov Regional Hospital in Vinnytsia. As a result, 53 packages of painkillers and antibiotics were supplied for the wounded at the hospital. Medicines were also dispatched for those who had stayed behind in Kharkiv and Sumy.

The SSSIO also supplied a variety of personal hygiene and cleaning products, fruit, and clothing to the Interregional Higher Vocational School #4, where 150 refugees – mothers with children, young girls, elderly women and men – were staying.

In Horodenka, food was supplied to a local boarding school and kindergarten for 40 children.

In Domaszek, near Szeged, near the Hungarian-Polish border, the Sathya Sai Group of Nyíregyháza has been delivering urgently needed food in private cars several times a week for more than 120 Ukrainian refugees sheltering in a local refugee center across the border.

SSSIO Hungary is distributing food, necessities, and medicines to refugees in Budapest.

There are more than two million refugees in Poland. SSSIO Poland is helping the refugees in Warsaw and elsewhere by offering food, shelter, clothing, accommodation as well as emotional support. Help is also being given to 200 mothers who are currently living in a shelter with their children.

SSSIO members are offering intense prayers for peace at their homes, in Sathya Sai Centers and Groups, and in online satsangs.

A "Walk for Peace" was organized by the Sathya Sai Center of Hamburg (Germany) past the Alster Lake to Russian and Ukrainian Consulates. The group sang peace songs and chanted the Gayatri Mantra and Samastha Lokah Sukhino Bhavantu (May All the Worlds Be Happy).

Jai Sai Ram

Media Committee
Sri Sathya Sai International Organisation