August 27, 2022

Two of BEARR’s trustees, Nicola Ramsden and Megan Bick, recently attended the University of Cambridge’s Ukrainian summer school school, where they were introduced to a volunteer organisation, Mosty-Movy, supporting Ukrainian refugees here in the UK. Find out more about their work and how to get involved below:

“Mosty-Movy is an online community of over 100 Russian and Ukrainian speakers living in the UK who make themselves available to provide language support to Ukrainian guests and their hosts as well as local government and charities. We include active and retired university professors, former expats, as well as native Ukrainian and Russian speakers who have made their home in the UK. “Mosty – Movy” means “language bridges” in Ukrainian; we turn language barriers into language bridges.  

Through our website, we collect requests for translation and interpretation. Most often, we provide language support over the telephone for conversations between Ukrainian guests and job centres, citizens advice and schools. We also try to provide interpreters for face-to-face engagements. 

And through those contacts, and our weekly zoom calls, we learn about the key issues affecting Ukrainian guests and their hosts. This enables us to adjust what we do and the support we offer. It also gives us data and insight for our other campaigns – on issues such as  

• persuading the UK government to invite Ukrainian amputation victims to the UK for treatment and rehabilitation,  

• persuading local education authorities to employ Ukrainian teachers as classroom assistants,  
• challenging the government to enable Ukrainians to move into private rented accommodation and  
• helping Ukrainian students find UK university places. 

We also continue to look for suitable “community scale” accommodation for Ukrainian guests such as recently closed care homes. 

Our website is www.mosty-movy.org and we can be contacted at Reg@mosty-movy.org. We comply with GDPR regulations. Some of our volunteers are qualified interpreters in Ukrainian and/or Russian and we even have an NHS GP who is Russian speaking in our number. 

Please do reach out if you think we could help you to help Ukrainian guests – or even if you would like to join us as a volunteer.”