A warm welcome: Red Cross inundated with Cork offers of homes for refugees
A Polish soldier carries a child and helps a refugee family after they crossed the border into Poland from Ukraine at the border crossing in Medyka, eastern Poland, on March 9, 2022. - The number of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine is expected to top two million soon, the head of the UN refugee agency Filippo Grandi said on March 8, 2022. Photo by LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP via Getty Images.
Almost 1400 Cork homes have offered to open their doors to Ukrainian refugees following an appeal from the Irish Red Cross.
According to the organisation, 75% is for shared accommodation where people have a room to spare.
As well as this, money donations have reached an unbelievable €14m.
A spokesperson for the Irish Red Cross said:
Given the overwhelming response, the Irish Red Cross said they would need some time to process the pledges.
“We are asking those who have registered with us with offers of accommodation to bear with us and our contact team will be in touch over the coming weeks. We have almost 12,000 pledges of accommodation since just last Friday when we had just 180 offers and to put it in context it took a few months to reach 1,000 pledges during our Syrian refugee campaign a few years ago.”
The organisation said that the business community also had stepped up to the mark.
“The Irish business community has also come onboard our Ukraine crisis appeal in great numbers with more and more calling us every day to offer help and so far over 125 companies have been in touch with our fundraising team and then so many community groups have also been reaching out to us about their fundraisers. We are just so grateful to such a wonderful reaction from the Irish people so far.” Dublin has seen 2,149 pledges, followed by 1,327 in Cork and 663 in Galway with a total of almost 12,000 across the country.
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