Ukraine Refugee Sports Project

Over the last six months, The Change Foundation has been running safe play zones for refugee children in Poland as they come over the border from Ukraine, giving parents or guardians time to organise the paperwork and other arrangements they need to move on as quickly and safely as possible. We are now looking to expand the safe play zones to the Ukraine/Moldova border in the coming weeks as this border gets busy with refugees fleeing the fighting in the south of the country.

At the same time, The Change Foundation has been running a series of sports summer camps for recently arrived Ukrainian refugee children into the UK. The camps have been an incredible success, giving the children something fun to look forward to, whilst enabling them to meet other Ukrainian children. The camps have also proved to be a great way for the children's mums to develop support groups amongst each other and to feel less isolated in their new home.

As we head into the winter months, the children and their mums have asked us if we can run similar sports camps in half terms and school holidays, including over Christmas and so we are now fundraising to double the £50,000 we have raised to date for the camps in Moldova and the UK.

To help fund both elements of this project, Change Foundation CEO, Andy Sellins, took on the mighty Andes mountain range in his 'Andy Over the Andes' cycling challenge and to try and raise another £50,000 he is planning to cycle the equivalent of the 2,400 km's, distance between London and Kyiv over the course of the next six weeks, starting on Ukraine Day on August 24th and finishing by the time of the next sports camp in October half term. The Change Foundation’s charity number – 1046047