Director of NGO Girls Yuliya Sporysh took part in an important dialogue with international donors, which took place at the British Residence in Brussels ahead of the Sixth Humanitarian Senior Officials Meeting on Ukraine.
The event was organized by the Alliance of Ukrainian CSOs and the Humanitarian NGO Platform in Ukraine — the two largest networks bringing together over 150 organizations. The aim of the meeting was to draw the international community's attention to critical issues of humanitarian response in Ukraine for 2026.
During the three-hour meeting, participants discussed systemic challenges facing the humanitarian sector:
the need to increase direct funding to Ukrainian organizations;
overcoming barriers in organizational verification and reporting;
ensuring the safety of teams working under shelling and energy crisis conditions;
integration of internally displaced persons and development of social services in communities.
In her speech, Yuliya Sporysh emphasized the critical challenges that humanitarian workers face daily: “We work in darkness and cold. Yet budgets often lack Duty of Care. Underfunding GBV work, closed shelters, fragmented funding — these are systemic problems that cannot be solved without honest dialogue with donors. Do not take our resilience for granted.”
The joint address of the two largest platforms of the humanitarian sector confirmed: when organizations act in a coordinated manner, their proposals turn into concrete solutions for international cooperation. The consolidated position of the sector, backed by data and practical experience, allows Ukrainian organizations to be not just recipients of aid, but full strategic partners in humanitarian response.
