On Friday, May 13, 2022, we visited the House of Representatives. Together with 14 people from our Ukrainian community, we spoke with second chamber members Anne-Marijke Podt, Don Ceder, Ruben Brekelmans and Evert Jan Slootweg.
The community
The community consists of Ukrainian people who have lived in the Netherlands for a long time and people who recently arrived in the Netherlands. They are experts when it comes to the most pressing needs, the main obstacles and the best practices that can be scaled up to improve the situation.
The experts discussed 4 pressing themes:
- Status
- Access to work
- Access to education
- Housing
1. Status:
The biggest problem is the long-term uncertainty and the lack of clarity about the rights that come with this status. How does the Netherlands implement the European directive in practice and what does this mean for the future?
2. Access to work:
The majority of people now residing in the Netherlands are mothers with children. Access to child care is essential for them to get to work. There are also concerns about the zero hours contract and its impact on government support, such as health insurance. Other bottleneck: It is not yet possible to work as a self-employed person, while this group has experience as entrepreneurs.
3. Access to education:
"Now, my dream is to study IT development in the Netherlands. My story is not unique, there are many boys and girls like me", says our youngest community member of 17 years old. Obstacles for these young people to continue their education in the Netherlands include the high cost of study and transportation, for which support is not yet available. In addition, although their diploma upon completion of high school is valued at slightly above havo level, in the current system they enter an ISK. This means redoing 3 years of high school when they could also go directly to higher education.
4. Housing:
Now that people have been here for weeks or for months, we see the absolute need to switch from temporary to more (semi)permanent housing. People are now used to living in the middle of society. But with the housing market completely locked, a perspective of future housing is not yet visible. The worst that can happen is large-scale shelter outside cities and towns. Converting (decently!) office spaces, betting on intergenerational living, betting on agricultural land repurposing, and involving the community in all these design questions is essential.
Parliamentary Questions
As a result of the visit and the situational report written by Maria Shaidrova, Minh Ngo, Juliette Bonnepart, the entire team of "The Displaced people Unit" (in particular, the regional coordinators Kseniia I., Nupur Joshi and mental health coordinator Anastasiia Omelianiuk) and the "Foundation of Ukrainians in The Netherlands," Anne-Marijke Podt, Don Ceder, Ruben Brekelmans and Evert Jan Slootweg posed questions to the relevant state secretary and ministers.
The knowledge and power from commmunities is essential. There is no better way to map out the effects of policy in practice and from here to focus on what is really needed.
