Refugees from Ukraine in Catalonia: welcome and help

Following the recent extraordinary session of Humanistic Dialogues on the origins of the conflict in Ukraine, a second session has already been organised, focusing on the weakest and most vulnerable part of this conflict: the refugees.

"Refugees from Ukraine in Catalonia: welcoming and helping" will take place on 5 April, at 12.30 pm, in the auditorium of the Ciutadella Campus, in a session that will be broadcast in streaming through the UPF website, and which is necessary to register, by filling out the form, to attend in person.

With this event, the UPF wants to make a gesture to demonstrate its commitment to refugees, to support those who will ask for shelter from the university environment and to create a space for meeting and not confrontation.

The event will be opened by Oriol Amat, Rector of the UPF, and Ester Oliveras, Vice-Rector for Social Commitment and Sustainability of the University, who will explain what the institution can offer at this time to university students arriving from Ukraine and what other actions are planned, information that is being collected on the special website on the conflict created by the University.

Panel

This will be followed by the first part of the session, with the debate "Refugees from Ukraine in Catalonia: welcoming and helping", moderated by Sílvia Cóppulo, journalist and director of the Business Leadership Observatory at the UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM).

The panel will include the participation of Victòria Alsina, Minister of Foreign Action and Open Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya, who carries out various actions in this field; Gemma Pinyol, associate research professor of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Immigration (GRITIM-UPF), who will give her academic point of view on the refugee crisis; Enric Morist Güell, coordinator of the Red Cross in Catalonia, and Tamara Djermanovic, lecturer at the UPF Faculty of Humanities, director of the Slavic Studies Seminar and coordinator of the Humanistic Dialogues.

In a second part of the event, there will be the participation of different guests located in row zero, to talk about the "Projects in action" of aid to Ukrainian refugees that is currently taking place in Catalonia. These are people at the head of various organisations and initiatives that play an active role in welcoming and helping this group, who will explain what work they are doing and how best to collaborate.

The following are scheduled to speak: Carme Claudín, Senior Research Associate at CIDOB (Barcelona Center for International Affairs); Montserrat Rovira Jarque, Head of the Department of Emergency and Social Emergency Services of the Municipal Institute of Social Services of Barcelona City Council; Yuri Mihalchenko, an artist from Barcelona who was born in Kiev.

Other speakers will include Olena Gvozdeva, director of the Novotravel tourist agency, which has now become the direct aid centre for refugees displaced to Barcelona; Toni Luna, vice-rector of Internationalisation at UPF; a representative of the UPF Legal Clinic; and Vasyl Davydko, associate professor in the UPF Department of Economics and Business, a Ukrainian national.

Register here!