Ukraine Shelter: 'Amazing' response to website helping refugees

Ian Bearder says his team of staff and volunteers are in it for the long haul

A software developer who set up a website to help refugees fleeing Ukraine has described the response to it as "amazing".

Ian Bearder, originally from Wendlebury, Oxfordshire, has lived and worked in Kyiv for about 12 years.

His website Ukraine Shelter helps match up refugees with those who are able to house them.

"It's way beyond what we expected," he said. "We operated on autopilot at first and it's grown so quickly."

More than three million people are believed to have fled Ukraine because of the Russian invasion.

Mr Bearder travelled to his holiday home in Kropa, Slovenia, as the situation intensified.

Describing the first week as "a mess of stress and trauma and jetlag and panic", he soon assembled his employees to work on a website that would "give both people who could offer shelter a way to register, and people who needed shelter a way to request it".

A team of call handlers took the requests and matched them with appropriate places to stay.

Mr Bearder's Kropa home serves as headquarters for Ukraine Shelter

About 12 people work on the site on a daily basis, with Mr Bearder's Kropa home serving as headquarters.

He houses refugees there too, the first to arrive being "three generations of one family - a grandmother, mother, daughter and a tortoise called Johnny".

Some of the volunteers on the phone are refugees themselves.

The website is partly funded by patrons, which has helped pay for desks, computers, mobile phones, and phone bills.

About 1,000 houses are now listed in its database, with the team dealing with about 900 refugee requests so far.

"I don't think we had a number in mind, but if we could've found shelter for 10 or 15 people, and 10 or 15 houses, I would've been happy," Mr Bearder said.

"If the war ends tomorrow we will all be delighted. We'll help everybody get back home, thank everybody, and shut the website.

"But if that doesn't happen we're in it for the long haul."