Amazon Opens Humanitarian Aid Hubs To Assist Ukrainian Refugees

Amazon has opened a new humanitarian aid hub in Slovakia to help relief organizations provide faster support to Ukrainian refugees, and Amazon Web Services is contributing technology resources to support humanitarian relief in Eastern Europe.

The humanitarian hub, in more than 16,000 square feet of warehouse space, is the largest Amazon has ever built. It will help provide millions of donated supplies, including shelter materials, hygiene items, blankets, and clothing to refugees. As critical supplies come in to Amazon’s European network, the items are shipped to the new hub in Slovakia, where space is exclusively set aside for the relief efforts. The supplies are distributed to refugees in partnership with international charities.

Amazon Web Services is powering applications that are facilitating the intake of Ukrainian refugees at border crossings, providing technology to help establish safe evacuation routes, setting up emergency internet connectivity, and enabling secure communications.

Amazon also has begun a new Welcome Door program to assist refugee and humanitarian-based immigrant employees, who will have access to a new Citizenship Assistance Portal that will support U.S. citizenship applications, free legal resources, and reimbursement for Employment Authorization Document renewal fees.

Amazon has launched its second humanitarian aid hub in Eastern Europe to help Ukrainian refugees, this time in Poland.

With more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees being forced to leave their country, the needs to support them are increasing every day. One week after the opening of the first humanitarian aid hub in Slovakia, we are adding a second humanitarian aid hub in Poland dedicated to getting much-needed supplies to Ukrainian refugees.

The facility is near Sosnowiec, a city in southern Poland, and consists of 4,500 square meters (nearly 48,440 square feet) of warehouse space where our employees consolidate, pack, and ship millions of critical supplies. The supplies are being distributed to Ukrainian families in partnership with charities like Save The Children and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The addition of this new facility nearly doubles the space we’ve dedicated to procuring first-need products for those impacted, and the effort continues to be Amazon’s largest humanitarian operation to date.

Amazon’s newest humanitarian hub expands on the ongoing relief efforts that we’ve supported in Poland since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine. Amazon has donated close to $1 million to Polish organizations supporting refugees on the ground, in addition to $5 million in donations to global NGOs actively working in Poland like UNICEF, UNHCR, Red Cross, and Save the Children. We have also set up office space in our Development Center in Krakow to help 70 members of the World Food Program coordinate their efforts in the region.

Amazon employees across Poland, which borders Ukraine, are also volunteering to help those in need. They’ve donated more than 17,500 blankets and helped provide meals to Ukrainian refugees in the cities of Gdansk, Warsaw, and Krakow, as well as in the villages of Hrebenne and Dorohusk, through Polish Humanitarian Action. The teams in our print-on-demand facility in Wrocław printed 1,400 children’s books in Ukrainian and, in partnership with the Gdansk’s Foundation, delivered them to community centers and apartments where Ukrainian parents and children have been staying.

We will continue to use Amazon’s infrastructure and technology to provide support to those impacted by this conflict.

Source : Amazon

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