How the war in Ukraine upturned their lives…

Illia, 21, Protection project manager for HI in Kharkiv: “From the moment the war started, my life changed completely”

Illia lives with his parents and little sister in Poltava, a medium-sized town in a once peaceful rural area. He remembers the day his whole life changed: “I discovered what war was like in February 2022, waking up to the sound of air-raid sirens,” he recalls. Illia had been studying law, but his university closed almost immediately. Then hundreds of people began to arrive, fleeing the fighting.

“I remember these people arriving by the hundreds and queuing up to be registered and helped. They needed everything: food, clothing and shelter. That's why I became a volunteer and then applied to HI.”

HI was Illia's very first job and the young man quickly rose through the ranks from social worker to Protection project manager. “If we don't identify people in need, no one will know that they require assistance”, he explains. Every evening since he joined HI, he has devoted time to his studies and recently completed his law degree. For the young humanitarian, there are still too many people in need in Ukraine, especially the most vulnerable groups...

“We must keep helping people with disabilities, especially during and after their evacuation. And we must keep providing assistance to displaced people fleeing the front and seeking refuge in the Kharkiv region. Today, the most difficult thing is the constant deterioration in security, which makes humanitarian access difficult... There are people trying to survive near the front, where unfortunately we can’t get help to them”, he says, with indignation.

Olga, 52, Explosive Ordnance Risk Education officer: “I wanted to bring vital help to my people”.

Olga is from the city of Kharkiv. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, she owned her own small beauty salon and worked as a beautician.

“The first few weeks of the escalation of the war were very difficult because the fighting was happening on the outskirts of Kharkiv and the city was being bombarded constantly. For seven days, I hid with my friends in an underground cellar before moving in with my daughter who, with the help of her neighbours, had built a solid and comfortable shelter in the basement of her house. It was in this shelter that my daughter and I hid for almost three months,” she recounts.

At the same time, Olga and her daughter became actively involved in voluntary work.  Following a personal tragedy in her daughter's life, Olga was forced to leave Ukraine for Austria. But given the scale of the conflict and the number of victims, she decided to return.

“I had to come back to help my family and my people”.

Overnight, Olga went from the world of beauty and skincare to raising awareness of the dangers of explosive remnants of war with HI. It was a complete change of direction that Olga accepted: “At that moment, beauty was no longer important to me: I wanted to save lives and bring vital help to Ukrainians”.

After weeks of training, Olga has now begun her first awareness-raising sessions in the field, meeting schoolchildren, adults, displaced people and humanitarian workers to explain how to protect themselves from explosive remnants of war, in an area heavily contaminated after three years of intense fighting.

“At HI, I met a nice team, and the working atmosphere is very good I would like to thank HI for helping my country."

Alina, 28, referral officer at HI in Dnipro: “I feel useful and that gives me the strength to move forward”.

Alina grew up and lived in Bakhmut until the city became the scene of bloody clashes between Ukraine and Russia. A young singing teacher, Alina fled with her parents, grandmother, partner and pets in March 2022. Her younger brother died a few months later in the Donetsk region. Alina still finds it hard to talk about how the war destroyed her life, forcing her to flee and taking her little brother from her.

“We found ourselves in mourning, with no job, no warm clothes, no house, nothing,” she tells us.

It was her partner who, to help her through these difficult times, secretly forwarded her CV to HI. With her experience as a teacher and then as facilitator of a child-friendly space, Alina was hired as a social worker and now protection referral officer at HI in Dnipro region. She explains how essential this work in a humanitarian organisation is to her:

“I feel useful and that gives me the strength to move forward. Every day, when we assess the needs of people affected by the war and then refer them to the appropriate services, I meet people who have been through the same things as me. Being evacuated, having to leave everything behind... I see in their eyes what I felt myself, and I understand them.”