S.O.S. Ukraine: Hundreds of Internally Displaced Families send Their Thanks.

Every day, recipients of your help send their deepest thanks for helping them through their most difficult days and trials. There are hundreds of emails like this!

Here are just a fraction of their words of gratitude:

I would like to say a big thank you to all the donors of the S.O.S. Ukraine Foundation and personally Carollyne for the financial support, it was very unexpected to me that there are such charities supporting the Ukrainians in such a difficult time for us. War divided our lives into before and after. I have a little son and we had to leave our beloved city where we had everything for a happy life, we don't know when we'll get home, now we start all over again. I sincerely thank you for your support, thanks to your financial help my son has winter clothes and shoes, paid rent and have money for groceries.

Thank you so much, Carollyne!!! With respect to you Alevtyna Uryvska.

Thank you very much for your help in such a difficult time! In peaceful times, I never expected help from anyone, I raised the children myself! This is a very hard one right now!..... ((((( but thanks to you and your indifference to other people's grief, we will stand, we will overcome these hard times and everything will be fine again!!!! Thank you and the kids very much for your help!!!! May God bless you for your good deeds and reward you a hundredfold!!!!!

Катюша Слисаренко

Good day! My personal story.

I, like other residents of Mariupol, did not believe that such a terrible war could begin. On the morning of February 24, I woke up and started preparing breakfast for the children before school. I heard a siren, I thought that there was some kind of training. She turned on the TV and saw the horror. Russian aircraft bombed cities. I quickly gathered the children, documents, medicine and food and prepared to run to the bomb shelter. The children were very frightened, they could not understand that they were in danger. From that day on, we started going to the bomb shelter as soon as the siren sounded. As long as it was light, it was somehow not scary in the storage room. Between the sirens, we came home, cooked food, tried to somehow relax, and again, when the sirens went, we ran to the storage room. This continued for about a week. Then they turned off the light, water and gas. We left the children in the storage room, and we went home and cooked food on the fire. For a bonfire, we cut trees that grew near the house. They went to the spring for water. They collected snow and covered it with food that could spoil. Every day it became more and more difficult to go home to prepare food. Constant sounds of planes flying overhead and dropping bombs on houses. We had to eat once a day. The children got sick because it was cool and very damp in the storage room. The eldest son lost a lot of weight, in peacetime he was an athlete, engaged in boxing. Due to the fact that there was no water to thoroughly wash his hands, the youngest son developed purulent wounds on his hands. I couldn't take them outside because there was constant shelling from planes and hail. So we lived for a month, we had time to celebrate two children's birthdays in the storage room. Instead of a cake with candles, volunteers brought cookies to the children.

When they couldn't stand it all, they decided to leave. My husband could not go with us because we have a bedridden grandmother. If he left, she would die of hunger and thirst in the cold apartment. Therefore, they decided that I would save the children and the grandmother who was walking, and he would save the grandmother who was lying down. We left with my sister and her husband. Those who were traveling did not know where we were going and whether we would get anywhere at all. But we were lucky. We were able to leave the burning city.

It becomes very scary when you are in a foreign city, without a job, without relatives, without housing. You don't know what to do next.

I am very grateful for your help. Your help for me is not only financial, but also moral. I will be able to buy fruit for the children, fully feed and clothe them. Grandma to buy medicine. School will start soon, school supplies will be needed.

This is moral help, when I can, with your help, even a little bit bring the children's life closer to peace, to the way it was before the war.

Thank you very much! I really appreciate your help!

-- A young Mariupol mother who wishes to remain anonymous

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for understanding, for kindness, empathy, sincerity, support! Please accept sincere thanks for not staying away from our grief. Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your help, timely and so necessary for our family. Юлия Омельчук

I and my family sincerely thank you for the financial assistance that helped to survive in the first months after leaving the enemy-surrounded city of Mariupol. My family of five and we left with one travel bag on everyone because we left with our friends car and many things couldn't fit. So your help was greatly appreciated and allowed us to buy hygiene items, food items and do medical checkups for the children. I never thought before that in a difficult situation, caring people from another country would be able to help, that their kind soul and sincere desire would help our family survive! Thank you very much!

Here is the story of our stay in Mariupol during the blockade. There are five men in my family: me, husband, daughter 9 years old, son 1 year old and mother. We left Mariupol under fire 15.03.22. Left at our own risk, staying there was unbearable, we had no light, no water, no heating. There has been no communication since March 2. Cooked at the campfire under shelling, water was carried from a well two kilometers from our house, shells were falling all around. On March 13th we started a real hell, shells hit our nine-story house (six hits), which caused two fires, one could be extinguished in our entrance and the next entrance could not be extinguished because it was over water in the heating system of the house, the district and even the city. As a result, the neighboring entrance burned out completely from the fourth to the ninth floors. Fragments flew into our windows, windows crashed. The shop from the house was thirty meters away. In order to close the windows with plywood, the man and his friend went to the kindergarten, at this time a shell hit the kindergarten, they miraculously survived. After the windows blew out, it became very cold at home, just plus six degrees, the kids and we all went home and slept in our winter coats and hats, food supplies were almost out, shared with us by our neighbors. We miraculously left, on the car of a friend of a man who lived with a girl with us since the beginning of the war, because in their area the shells fell nearby at once. At the moment when the shell hit our yard, the back glass flew off in the car, I had to wrap it with film and tape, so we drove... Later, we learned that when the Russian military entered the city, our apartment was broken into by them. After this, part of our valuables were stolen by the Russian military and the other part by the looters.

My own photos from Mariupol during the blockade, unfortunately, there are none, as there was no electricity and the phones were discharged. Ольга Завидняк

Good afternoon. Until February 24, I had everything - a job, a home, a hope for a bright future. After the Russian terrorists bombed my garden Mariupol, we were forced to leave the city after two weeks without light, water, heat, food. We are in some middle ages. Without clothes, not washed, hungry we left for the controlled territory of Ukraine. At this point, SOS Ukraine and Carrolyne helped us a lot. And now that my father is in the hospital, financial aid from your charity helps us a lot, because medicine in Ukraine is very expensive.

I never thought I would become a refugee, but thanks to the terrorists from Russia, it became real.

Our family is very grateful for your financial help. Thanks to everyone who helps Ukrainians. You guys are amazing!!

And I am sure that good will triumph over evil. Anonymous recipient

Hello. I would like to express my gratitude for the financial assistance provided to us through S.O.S. Ukraine Charity. We are a large family (3 children) from the Kharkov region, the city of Chuguev. In the month of April, we left our apartment and left our city, since I was 8 months pregnant and went to another area where it was calmer and there were no such active hostilities. As a result of the war, my husband's mother lost her house in the first weeks of the war, the house was blown up, the whole yard was smashed with shrapnel. Our apartment was not significantly damaged due to a nearby missile attack, the shelling of our city continues very strongly today. Now we also live in Ukraine, only in a different region. It is also dangerous to be here, as it is throughout Ukraine, due to the air strike that Russia directs, but less dangerous than in Kharkov. All your help was spent on food, detergents, medicines, as well as a medical examination of the child, during which we were diagnosed with a fracture of the lower pubic hilar fold with the formation of a hybnoe loin. My child needs surgery according to the doctors. I can say one thing, that today I am very ashamed to seek, ask and receive help from caring people in order to survive. We never could have thought that my children could survive the war, who today have become afraid of any loud knock, an airplane flying in the sky, they know what tanks are, they know how to run away and hide in a damp basement when it’s frosty outside from shelling . I don’t know why we are, but we believe in our Ukrainian forces and we know that we will soon win this war. Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart, God bless you and your families. Катерина Овсяннікова

Photos she provided of her home and their stay in a bomb shelter: