Euronews spoke to Wladyslaw Grochowski, who has been recognised, along with his wife, by the UN for providing safe accommodation for refugees in Poland.
ADVERTISEMENTWladyslaw Grochowski and his wife, Lena, have been recognised by the United Nations for their work providing safe accommodation for refugees.
The Polish couple launched the Lena Grochowska Foundation in 2014 to support people of Polish origin returning to the country. But after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, they expanded their work to help the flow of refugees entering the country.
Their Arche hotel network has since provided 500,000 nights of free lodging.
"On February 24, we took the first refugees in at the hotel in Lublin. On the next day, crisis centres were created in all 16 hotels. We welcomed everyone who came to us. I am proud that we managed all that. It was quite a challenge," Wladyslaw Grochowski told Euronews.
Kateryna Darynska is a Ukrainian refugee who now works with the foundation. She told Euronews that she didn't know what to expect when she and her family arrived in Poland but was surprised by the welcome she received.
"You [travel] with all your family, with one suitcase, and you don't know where you are going... or where you will end up sleeping," she said. "And when we came, there were chefs, a lot of employees [waiting for us], and we got warm food."
"And there was a whole bus of displaced people from different cities in Ukraine. And they fed us, gave us linen, they gave us everything. It was so important to us."
The Grochowski family has now been supporting refugees for two years. In 2022 alone, their foundation invested €4.1 million in housing for refugees, and it has opened centres in six cities in Poland.
That is one of the reasons why the UNHCR has named them as Europe's winners of the Nansen Prize, which recognises people from around the world who go "beyond the call of duty" to help refugees.
"They have given a lot more than aid to refugees. They have empowered refugees by helping them to find jobs, to get training, to get socially included," Andreas Kirchhof, a Senior External Relations Adviser at UNHCR, said.
"And secondly, they have mobilised the business community. They have worked with cities, they have worked with humanitarian organisations, so it's a whole of society approach which we see here and which benefits refugees."
Abdullahi Mire was the global winner of the prestigious prize. The journalist and former refugee from Somalia campaigned for the right to education for displaced young people in Kenya by providing them with some 100,000 books.
The Grochowski family has also been offering accommodation to migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border.