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Kyiv, 30 August 2024:  Yesterday, Karolina Lindholm Billing, UNHCR Representative in Ukraine, met with Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine, to solidify a new partnership aimed at providing crucial humanitarian support to displaced children and larger foster families across Ukraine.

During the meeting, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the Olena Zelenska Foundation, underscoring their commitment to work together in providing essential aid and improving access to social and protection services, including legal assistance and psychosocial support to those in need.

Through this cooperation, UNHCR will provide essential household appliances to be distributed to internally displaced large foster families who have been significantly impacted by the ongoing war.

By providing necessary household appliances, UNHCR, through its collaboration with the Olena Zelenska Foundation, will help these foster families improve the well-being and comfort of displaced children who have already endured so much hardship. These include families who lost their homes as a result of the full-scale invasion and were forced to build their lives from scratch in a new place.

Another important area of cooperation includes the promotion of access to mental health and psychosocial support services for internally displaced people, returnees, and other war-affected individuals. This is aimed at addressing trauma and facilitating psychological recovery in line with the National Program of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support initiated by the First Lady.

“Our partnership with the First Lady and her Foundation reflects our shared commitment to support displaced and war-affected families to physically and