Over 7,500 Ukrainians enrolled in the Employment Service – no statistics on how many have jobs
In Ukraine, she worked as a nurse and also at the front in the war against Russia. But now she is in Sweden and with the help of Botildenborg Oksana Husak got her first Swedish job at a retirement home.
– I helped them elderly with activities such as gymnastics and bingo. I have taken care of the elderly and cleaned up for them. I worked eight hours every day and when I got my first salary I was very happy, says Oksana Husak.
Plans become a nurse
She believes that without the foundation’s help, it would have been more difficult to get the job. Now she is taking a course in professional Swedish with a care orientation interspersed with an SFI course. In January, she plans to take a course to become a nurse. Natalia Gorpynych was at first somewhat skeptical about participating in Botildenborg’s project:
– The first time I thought I would be fooled. I thought that in Sweden you could not help anyone, but after I was here I realized that Lena was very nice and soon I got a job.
In Ukraine she worked as a personal assistant and here she has got to work as a childcare worker.
– It is a little different jobs but children are children, children are very nice. In the first job I had with children, they taught me some Swedish and it was very nice and very nice, says Natalia Gorpynych.
Works actively for Ukrainians to get a job
The Botildenborg Foundation has two different legs that are on the work of providing newly arrived refugees in Sweden. On the one hand, you let the participants grow and cook together. In this moment you will learn some simpler Swedish but also create new friendships and contacts. This, in turn, should strengthen self -confidence, make you get to know other Swedes and that you actually dare to speak the language.
But on the part of the foundation, active work is also done towards employers, to make them dare to hire a newly arrived refugee:
– When the participants come here we get to know each other so we can be each other’s references but also that we are actually looking for the job for them. For us, it is more about working with employers and getting them to be safe and daring to hire a Ukrainian participant who may not be perfectly Swedish because usually they have super skills, it is only the language you lack, says Lena Friblick, founder for the foundation Botildenborg.
Statistics are missing
There are currently no statistics on what employment looks like for Ukrainian refugees. But according to the Employment Service, 7580 Ukrainians are currently enrolled in the authority as a job seeker. Since 2022, around 1500 Ukrainians have been given jobs or subsidized services during different periods according to the Employment Service.
For the past two years, Botildenborg has run several projects, funded by the European Social Fund and the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund in the EU to help Ukrainians in Sweden. Now that this effort is coming to an end, 80 Ukrainians, 70 percent, have received their first Swedish job.
– We have received project funds from the EU and now that opportunity has been completed. But now there are opportunities for Ukrainian refugees to take part in the Employment Service’s establishment program, so now we hope that there is even more help for them to enter the Swedish labor market, says Lena Friblick.