Articles

“I continue to help because I am motivated by my daughter, wife and all my friends. I can feel people’s gratitude from an ordinary look, it gives meaning to everything. Volunteering has brought me together and introduced me to a huge number of good people with whom we still communicate and help each other,” Yevhen shares.

“When few businesses are operating in a city under siege, business-customer relationships become closer and more human. Imagine that lone coffee shop working in your neighborhood despite the shelling. You become friends with its staff. It’s like that,” Victoria shares.

“‘Home’ consists of many factors you don’t think about, but when they’re gone, you realize something is off. Home is about the people, the place, the routine, the smell, and how you feel about it all. Would I feel at home with my parents abroad? I don’t think so. They don’t feel at home there, either. So, right now, I don’t really have a home as such,” — Hlib shares.

“It is important that my husband’s work does not die. Sometimes I joke that [fate] took away my personal life so that I could have more time for social causes,” Karina says.

“Sometimes you think you’ve just come to the military position to take some portraits, and then you find out that some of them are no longer alive. You realize that this is a very important shoot for their families, their loved ones, and for you because you captured them alive and smiling,” Vlada and Kostia Liberov share.

“My mother told me to go to Kostiantynivka (a town 50 kilometers from Donetsk – ed.) to my father and stepmother. It was supposed to be for a week. I packed a backpack, put two T-shirts and shorts. And in the end, I never returned home,” Lisa says.