The humanitarian crisis related to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people from war-torn Ukraine has shifted the responsibility for refugee support from a small group of specialised and experienced organisations to a challenge faced by the wider Polish social sector. Additionally, the operating conditions of the surveyed group of organisations are changing dynamically. The long-term activities in the crisis and the shrinking of funding, partly linked to the withdrawal of international organisations, bear consequences for the organisations themselves, those directly involved within them, as well as for refugees. This research project responds to the need for access to current and reliable data regarding the situation, challenges, and needs of civil society organisations supporting all refugees in Poland.
The aim of this research is to look at the status of Polish civil society organisations, and other informal initiatives providing aid to refugees in Poland as of February 2024, and to describe their activities, resources, challenges and needs. This research focused on the following:
- Characteristics of the landscape of local organisations supporting refugees in Poland, including the identification of key activities of these organisations;
- Looking into the conditions of these organisations, including their resources, needs and challenges, with a particular focus on the issue of burnout among teams and challenges related to access to funding
- Formulating recommendations that will facilitate support for local organisations providing services to refugees in Poland, especially in developing organisational infrastructure and business continuity. Our approach to the research topics is multifaceted and evolving, we have depicted the current state of affairs and the changes that organisations have experienced between 2021 and 2022, the period directly before and after the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, and between 2022 and 2023, during the crisis.