Durrett-Davies Ukrainian Refugee Childcare Project

Photo: Charles Durrett (center, in red)visiting Tierra Nueva Cohousing) March 2022

About the project: You may not know that over 80% of the Ukrainian refugees are children under the age of 18.  32% of the refugees are under the age of 5.  (UN Refugee Agency – UNHCR)

In April, Charles Durrett and Ben Davies will travel to Poland and work to build at least 1 large childcare center for the benefit of these children.  If it is successful, it may lead to more.   The time to help is now.  The need is already there and growing every day.

This project has 5 phases:
1.  Selection of the building
2. Design of the spaces for the children
3. Construction – partitions, bathrooms, electrical
4. Play structures 
5. Turn over to local operators.

To keep costs down, we hope to make extensive use of refugee labor for any skills they can contribute.  Still, it is going to be expensive.  We hope there will be bathrooms with hot and cold water and not latrines.  It all depends on the money that is available and the condition of the building we end up with.

Once things are more defined, we plan to set up a website or facebook page to catalog progress.