Overview – Purple Vest – Ukraine 2022
When the war broke in Ukraine, Access Israel understood the need to focus on making sure solutions on the ground fit those most vulnerable, those that are left behind – people with disability and the elderly. The requests for help started to come, calling for help for specific and unique needs for people with disabilities. Access Israel immediately understood the special needs of people with disabilities and the elderly that are left behind and are not evacuated or assisted because the complexity of arranging accessible evacuation and because of lack of available knowledge on how to do it right.
Access Israel decided to initiate the “Purple Vest Mission” – train people on the ground to accessibly assist and evacuate specifically people with disabilities, the elderly and their families. To Save Life’s.
Access Israel began by assisting cases that were received in connecting Ukrainians wanting to evacuate with accessible solutions especially on the Polish side of the border but also in Ukraine through connections to Israeli organizations and volunteers operating within Ukrainian borders.
After receiving a generous grant from The Nippon Foundation in Japan to continue the Purple Vest work in Ukraine, we were able to scale up and gain commitment of representatives on the ground who went through trainings and basically formed the Purple Vest Mission infrastructure for the Emergency task Force Ukraine 2022.
At first the focus was on evacuations especially from Eastern Ukraine. In some cases, special evacuation vehicles were needed for horizontal and complicated evacuations but starting May 2022 we added evacuations using the Ukrainian train system cooperating with 2 organizations in Kharkiv who converted train cars to enable horizontal secured travel. We secured a network of partners from Israel, Poland, Germany, Norway, Holland and more with whom we either transported the evacuees or were assisted with accommodations.
The Purple Vest mission volunteers also ensured that those who chose to stay home will receive assistance. Our humanitarian aid focused on accessibility needs, sanitary equipment, medicine, food and heating solutions. The Purple Vest volunteers visited lonely elderly and families with people with disabilities at home to understand needs and provide human contact. After building our network most of the assistance was done through our partners in Kiev, Ivano Frankivsk and Kharkov.
The Purple Vest in Ukraine bore fruit: in the first year, we evacuated around 4,000 persons with disabilities and elderly from their homes, and provided humanitarian assistance to approximately 10,000 people who chose to remain in their homes. We are proud of this mission, which served as the starting point for the Global Purple Vest Mission.
