Serhii is an Integration Support Worker with Doras. This is his #WeAct story

Serhii Korobtsov is an Integration Support Worker with Doras, a human rights organisation in Limerick that promotes and protects the rights of migrants in Ireland. This is his #WeAct story... 

I was ready to work when I arrived in Ireland. I was staying in a tent in Dublin, but the conditions were great and I knew it was temporary. I tried to put down roots and find work straight away, as a delivery driver or on a construction site, but within 10 days, I was moved to Limerick. It worked out for the best.  

I'm really proud and honoured to work with Doras. Having this opportunity to be useful and to use my skills, my knowledge, my enthusiasm, my experience, is great. Sometimes people think that Doras is my last name! They all know me as Serge Doras. 

When I came to Limerick, we were settled in the student accommodation. It's 80% mamas with kids, elderly people, disabled people. I have an English diploma, but I hadn’t used English in a few years. I was very shy, I doubted my skills, but I was ambitious. Every morning I was getting up with the feeling of, ‘What I have done for the benefit of my people?’.  

After two or three days, a very kind, very polite, Irish gentleman from Doras came to the accommodation. It was an emotional moment. There were a lot of people who were terrified, their husbands are fighting, maybe they’ve received bad news from home. We were all in a circle, hundreds of people, as he was addressing the crowd and it was loud! I thought that this is the moment, and I said sorry, ‘Sorry sir, but you probably need some help in translation, interpreting?”  

He told me his name was John Lannon. You don’t understand what that means I'm the biggest Beatles fan ever. It’s spelled a little different, but now I can say my CEO and my very good friend, is John Lannon!  

I started to help him in the accommodation centre. We made a list of immediate priorities. I helped Irish volunteers who opened a zero-cost shop, planned activities for the kids, I reviewed Ukrainian language booklets, Volunteering for a week, turned into a month. I was looking for work, but Doras said they needed me full time and offered me a job. I was very enthusiastic. And that enthusiasm hasn’t gone anywhere in two years. 

My coping mechanism is my work. My friends are fighting so I have to help. I don’t mean this to punish myself, it’s an honest feeling.  

Sometimes people who don't know my situation or are a little bit sceptical, can think, ‘Why is he not in Ukraine?’ I was lucky enough to be out of Ukraine just before the war so I had the option legally, to not to go back. I lost a money, property, a nice job. It was not an easy choice for me. But I had a choice and I used it. It doesn't excuse my survivor syndrome, the self-pity, the constant questioning of myself, but that’s my story.  

In the first year, I became a liaison person, it was a lot of gathering information for people. For a lot of people who arrived to Ireland, they thought it was temporary, they didn’t prepare themselves to stay. So now I'm trying to focus on integration projects and events.

My favourite thing about my job is the positive results, the fruits of it. A lady called me recently on a Friday afternoon, she’d be checked out of the hotel, she had two kids and nowhere to go. Thank God for the Irish Red Cross, within two hours they had found them a host family. It’s the positive moments like that.  

The work I do here is nothing compared what my fellows back in Ukraine are experiencing, but you help out the best you can.  

First published at https://www.weact.ie/