Elsevier Weekblad has named all people who serve as host families for Ukrainians as person of the year. Two Drenthes tell what it’s like to receive Ukrainian refugees.
Aly Kampinga from Assen was surprised when she heard that she became person of the year, among others. “So funny. I didn’t know this at all. What an honor!”
She takes care of a single mother with her son (15) from Kharkiv. She says it’s going well. “Tatyana is a dentist in Ukraine. She now cleans at a dental practice in Assen. Soon she will probably take Dutch lessons at Drenthe College, so that hopefully she can really get started as a dentist at the practice,” says Kampinga.
The son is also doing well. “Yaroslav takes classes at the ISK in Assen in the mornings. In the afternoons he still takes online classes, together with the class he was in in Kharkov. He is very smart and he also speaks very good English.”
Thomas Braaksma from Nieuwlande was touched by the images on television that were shown at the start of the war in Ukraine. He then decided to drive to the Ukrainian border to pick up a number of people. “It will happen to you yourself, then you would also like to be taken care of. Moreover, the south of France is further away, so it is a relatively small effort to drive to the border.”
In the end, Braaksma had 38-year-old Julia and her daughter Kristina (10) in the house for more than a month. “In the beginning I told them that as far as I’m concerned they could stay until Christmas. Nevertheless, we actively looked for another accommodation.”
According to Braaksma, the fact that he immediately started looking for another accommodation was in the interest of his guests. “The moment you take those people in, they feel like a guest. I thought it was important that they were given the space to develop themselves. In my opinion, that was much better possible in a shelter.”
Braaksma has regular contact with Julia. He knows how to tell that she now has a job in the Netherlands.
Braaksma is pleased that Elsevier Weekblad has named all the people who take care of Ukrainians as person of the year. “It’s good that there are so many people who take care of Ukrainians or have taken care of them and that they get a little recognition in this way.”
Kampinga says that she first thought carefully about whether she wanted to take care of people. The decisive factor came for her when she thought about her own children. “If war were to break out in the Netherlands, I would also like it if my children were taken care of somewhere.”
She says that it is sometimes difficult, because it also creates a lot of extra work. “Actually, you have to arrange everything for these people, because they do not speak the Dutch language themselves. Sometimes, due to my own busy life, I am too tired to also sort out things for my host family.”
For Kampinga, that does not alter the fact that it is incredibly rewarding work. “I have gained two friends since they arrived. I would miss them terribly if they went back to Ukraine.”