Matching service for Ukrainian refugees to help fleeing families find homes in Britain

A website that has found sponsor homes for nearly 6,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion is now turning its attention to finding homes in Britain for refugees.

EU4UA.org has registered 30,000 Ukrainian refugees who are seeking families to take them into their homes to escape the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and neighbouring countries.

The site has so far only enlisted 400 UK families, compared with 3,000 French and 2,500 Spanish families, because of uncertainty over the form the UK sponsorship scheme would take for families without ties to the UK.

Now the UK scheme has been launched, the site is turning its sights on Britain. Its founders believe it could provide the solution to the searches by thousands of UK families tasked by the Government with finding their own refugees to whom they will open up their homes.

The Telegraph revealed on Monday that a Ukrainian family of four, who fled the Russian shelling to reach Moldova, linked up with a sponsoring British family in their six-bedroom Yorkshire home through EU4UA.org.

Arnaud Devigne, one of the four founders of the site, said that at the outbreak of the war, the creators had wanted to use their expertise to “do something for good and help the refugees”. They had previously set up a successful job matching site.

Host families can join the site via email or a Google account, which is verified to ensure it is not a Russian bot. They provide information including whether they have an empty house or one to share, their location and specify the gender and composition of the families or individuals they can take.

Refugees who have also signed onto the site can then search for a sponsor that matches their needs and click a contact request on the relevant potential hosts. Host and refugee can then decide whether to share personal details and pictures, and go on to build an online relationship.

Since the start of the conflict, between 2,000 and 3,000 refugees have already arrived at their hosts’ homes. A further 3,000 are in transit, mainly from Poland and Germany. Mr Devigne said about 60 per cent of hosts got at least one contact request from a refugee family.

Ministers are exploring a similar “matching” computer programme for the second phase of the sponsorship scheme where charities, churches and other community groups are likely to play a bigger part in placing refugees.

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