A brand new Prague-based web radio station has began to broadcast information, info and music tailor-made to the day-to-day issues of some 300,000 refugees who’ve arrived within the Czech Republic since Russia launched its army assault in opposition to Ukraine.
In a studio on the coronary heart of the Czech capital, radio veterans work along with absolute freshmen to offer the refugees with what they should know to settle as easily as attainable in a brand new nation.
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The employees of 10 mixed individuals who have fled Ukraine in latest weeks with those that have been residing overseas for years. No matter who they’re, their frequent purpose is to assist fellow Ukrainians and their homeland dealing with the brutal Russian invasion.
Natalia Churikova, an skilled journalist with Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty mentioned she could not say no to a proposal to grow to be the broadcaster’s editor-in-chief.
“It was for my people, for people who really needed help, who really needed support, something that would help them start a new live or restart their lives here after they have lived through very bad things trying to escape from Ukraine,” Churikova mentioned .
Staffer Sofia Tatomyr is a type of who left to flee the struggle.
The 22-year-old from the western city of Kalush was planning to maneuver to a different metropolis in Ukraine when a pal known as one morning: “Sofia, the war has just begun.”
Her mother and father and older brother opted to remain house, however they needed her to affix her aunt in Prague.
“It happened all of a sudden,” she mentioned. She boarded a bus alone in Cherniutsi and arrived 28 hours later within the Czech capital, a metropolis she’d by no means visited.
“When I used to be already overseas, I keep in mind the second that I used to be crying and I used to be attempting to purchase a ticket and I could not spell what ticket I want. It was actually troublesome,” she mentioned.
Tatomyr labored as graphic designer and singer in Ukraine after getting a level as a writer and media editor. Radio broadcasting was a part of her programs on the college. To her shock, her aunt’s brother discovered an announcement about jobs for a brand new Ukrainian radio station.
She mentioned she wanted “some time to understand that not everybody can be at the frontline at the war and everybody has to do what he or she can do the best.”
“So that is how I’m cheering myself up that I’m doing my career, that I’m doing what I can do one of the best, and that is the easiest way I can assist our folks, I can assist Ukraine. This is how I’m excited about it,” she mentioned.
Safe in Prague, she was nonetheless attempting to come back to phrases with the invasion of her homeland.
“It’s horrible,” she mentioned. “I can not nonetheless discover any logical clarification for what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. In the twenty first century, a struggle? Why? We have been a peaceable nation residing simply our lives.
Another announcer, Marharyta Golobrodska, was working as a copywriter for a software program firm when she obtained a name from Churikova, whom she knew from an internship at Radio Free Europe.
“I used to consider those who get up early to be ready to work from 6 am crazy, but that’s what I do now and I thoroughly enjoy it,” Golobrodska mentioned. “That’s what I always wanted to do, to be helpful for my country, even though I live so far away.”
For 12 hours every weekday and 11 hours on weekends Radio Ukraine performs Ukrainian and western music whereas presenting information of Ukraine and the Czech Republic along with info for refugees each quarter-hour.
It contains particulars about the place they’ll get the paperwork they want from native authorities, how one can get a job or medical therapy, or how one can discover a place for youngsters at faculties. Children can take heed to Ukrainian fairy tales.
A local of the southern metropolis of Mykolaiv, Golobrodska has lived within the Czech Republic for eight-and-a-half years. After the invasion, she traveled to western Ukraine to fulfill her mom and 9-year-old sister and drive them to security. In Prague, she acquired them concerned in her broadcast.
“My mum, for example, told me she’d like to hear what she’s not supposed to do here. For example, that she can’t park the car anywhere she wants to like in Ukraine,” she mentioned.
Bohemia Media, which operates a number of radio stations within the Czech Republic, got here up with the thought to launch the station. It supplied a studio and its folks cooperated with the Ukrainian embassy, the native Ukrainian neighborhood and others to make it actuality in three weeks. It additionally covers the salaries.
Lukas Nadvornik, the proprietor of the Mediapark, an organization that represents Bohemia Media, mentioned the plan is for the station to stay on air so long as it is wanted. The key job for now’s to let know as many potential listeners as attainable about its existence.
One of them is Sophia Medvedeva. The 23-year previous net designer could not maintain again tears as she talked in regards to the latest six-day drive together with her mom and youthful brother from Mykolaiv to Krakow, Poland.
But in Prague, she joined her fiance and Radio Ukraine helped her adapt to a brand new life.
“I’m so amazed in regards to the probability to take heed to Ukrainian music when I’m not in my homeland. I really feel that I’m not alone,” she mentioned. Her solely suggestion for it’s to ask a psychologist to “advise the Ukrainian refugees about how one can battle the survivor syndrome and how one can battle melancholy.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
