Volunteer faces: three stories of those who have been helping others amid the full-scale war

The volunteer movement in Ukraine is a phenomenon of resilience and unity of an entire nation. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, thousands of thousands of people have lost stability in their lives, their families, their jobs, and, just as important, their sense of purpose, which they have held onto all their lives. Hundreds of thousands of people decided to invest their time and energy in helping those in need and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukrainian Volunteer Service (UVS) observes thousands of volunteers’ stories as we work together.

In this article, we tell three stories of volunteers about their lives before and after the invasion. It is impossible to count the number of volunteer stories that are being written in Ukraine right now. At the same time, all the volunteers have different backgrounds and professions, but together they form a large movement united by values.

Vira Fatieieva

Volunteer, fashion designer

For the past 10 years, Vira Fatieieva has been working as a designer and creative director of the Ukrainian women’s clothing brand. When the full-scale invasion started, she had to move from Kyiv to Sheptytske (formerly Chervonohrad), in the Lviv region. She recalls that the world seemed to stop then, and life was divided into before and after.

“Fashion design is a huge passion of mine. And at one point, when the invasion started, I realized that I was no longer interested in it. I tried to continue working in fashion. It was difficult and not relevant at the time, so I was looking for a new job. It was then in Sheptytske that I first joined the community of local women whose husbands had gone to the battlefront,” says Vira.

Many local miners’ vaults still had uniforms from the Soviet era. The reliable and durable fabric of the uniforms proved to be very practical, so the volunteers found a new use for it – they sewed load-bearing vests for the military. The uniform that protected the miners in the 1960s is now helping the military stay safe.

In the summer of 2022, Vira returned home to Kyiv and realized that her life and the capital were completely different: “It was a year of changes and searching for new meanings and living through the crisis, but volunteering helped me to remain myself.”

In 2023, the woman subscribed to the Instagram page of Repair Together, a volunteer organization that has been rebuilding villages in the Chernihiv region since they had been liberated from Russian troops. One of Repair Together’s projects is INBUT, an international construction camp where foreigners and Ukrainians volunteer. Currently, similar initiatives and organizations for reconstruction volunteering are actively developing in Ukraine. The National Volunteer Platform collects volunteer opportunities in this area – through the platform, volunteers can easily register for initiatives and camps.

“I saw the announcement of the construction camp and felt it was worth a try. The format was completely different and new to me, as I had never been involved in construction. I decided to take a chance and join for four days, which eventually turned into ten,” the volunteer recalls.

Later, Vira joined the volunteer camp “Velyke Divnytstvo” (Great Girlhood), a Repair Together project where only women build houses and pave the way for other women to have equal opportunities to fulfill themselves in the construction industry.

Today, Vira works as an International Camps Manager for the Repair Together team. Her experience as a volunteer has helped her to better understand the values of the project and work with volunteers respectfully and effectively.

“Last summer was my happiest summer in many years. While looking for a job, I realized that leaving Kyiv to volunteer, living in a tent in nature, doing physical work was a great retreat for my mental state. This experience changed me and my views, helped me to perceive everything in life more easily,” says Vira Fatieieva.

Halyna “Haika” Lozova

Volunteer, director of the Ukrainian Sisters charity organization and head of the humanitarian hub

But later, most customers began to come to Halyna’s station because of her good reputation and quality work. In particular, there were regular female customers with whom Halyna still keeps in touch.“I think our customers stayed because we did everything fairly, looked for the best options for our customers, and never sold spare parts just to sell them,” Halyna recalls.

The business was going well until Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“On February 24, my husband went from Kyiv to a service station to rescue cars that were being repaired. In the first days, the occupiers shelled all the towns near Kyiv. The building next to our service station was hit directly on the second floor. On the first floor was our warehouse with oils and greases, everything burned down. 

After the de-occupation of Bucha and Irpin in May 2022, we took out all the equipment and never opened again. I was attached to that place with all my heart, but I had no financial and moral capacity anymore,” says Halyna.

Halyna became a volunteer without a plan to do so. First of all, she helped her clients, mechanics from the service station, and friends to leave Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel, Vorzel, and Nemishaievo when it was no longer safe to stay there because of the battles going on nearby.

“I was in touch with a police officer I knew and volunteers, to whom I passed on information about people who needed to be taken out. Then this flow did not stop. We took people out, started collecting aid for the military, buying and sending it without a break. Time seemed to lose its meaning. De-occupation came, Easter followed. We continue to volunteer, delivering Easter cakes,” says Halyna.

“In May, someone called me and said: “Good afternoon, are you a volunteer?”. I said no. The caller continued: “We were given your number and told that we could contact you for help.” Only then did I realize that I was now a volunteer,” Halyna says, laughing.

That same year, Halyna started volunteering at “Ukrainian Sisters”, a charity organization that aims to provide single mothers with the support, resources, and tools they need to achieve their goals and improve their quality of life. Later, she became part of the team.

“Our beneficiaries are single moms, military wives, and women in general who lack support from their community. Currently, I am the director of the organization and develop our projects, both humanitarian and psychological. We help women find a job and integrate into a circle of like-minded people, organize children’s activities,” Halyna explains.

The organization became a literal refuge for families in June 2023, when Russians blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. Thanks to the Obolon District Administration and the Department of Education, the organization managed to get premises to open a headquarters and shelter in Kyiv. 

In three months, the headquarters received more than 70 evacuated families. Volunteers from Kyiv’s Obolon district helped with the building’s repairs, schools collected aid, and foundations and organizations sent humanitarian aid. A community of volunteers gathered around the headquarters to unload the humanitarian aid, pack it and distribute it to the evacuees, send it to Kherson region and to the defenders at the front.

“We keep in touch with the beneficiaries and invite them to a joint chat, where we continue to advise and support them. We remember the story of every woman who comes to us for help. Recently, in September, I convinced a woman with children to leave Kostiantynivka, as the situation in the city was difficult. I promised her that we would provide them with humanitarian aid and shelter. She made up her mind and later got a place to live in Hansen’s Town (housing in Kyiv region for families who lost their homes due to the Russian invasion), where she met another of our girls. Now they keep in touch and come to our hub for events together,“ says Halyna.

At the end of November 2023, for the first time in a while, Halyna decided to take a break and went to a volunteer retreat organized by the Ukrainian Volunteer Service (UVS) in the Carpathians. Volunteers who work with people can often feel tired or exhausted from the constant interaction with people living through tragedy. UVS works to nurture the capacity of volunteers, preventing burnout. Halyna recalls that the retreat helped her to recover and be filled with new energy.

“There are moments when I feel like giving up. But I just need to go to our community chat and see the smiles on the photos of women and children, and my motivation returns. Women tell us that we save them, get them out of their problems, and thanks to this, they begin to believe in themselves. And their feedback fills us with strength to continue working,” says Halyna.

“It seems to me that volunteering is addictive for me. I thank the universe for finding a resource to help that I can share with others. I want to help people find hope that will pull them out and help them fulfil themselves,” says Halyna.

Yevhen Petrov

Volunteer from Skadovsk, the Kherson region

Yevhen was born in Skadovsk, where he lived most of his life. Before Russia started the full-scale invasion, Yevhen worked for an Internet service provider and was building his family.

“At five in the morning, our friends called and told us that a full-scale war had started. I went to work as usual, we talked to my colleagues and monitored the situation – at the time, we didn’t seem to realize the seriousness of the events. The same day the city was occupied,” Yevhen recalls.

Yevhen’s wife got him involved in volunteering. At the time, she was helping to find medication for children. Meanwhile, Yevhen and his colleagues joined the city’s public order patrols organized by the mayor, Oleksandr Yakovlev.

“Over time, we were joined by people we knew who also helped. We formed a community of volunteers, and we all tried to keep in touch, exchange information and be useful to each other,” says Yevhen.

The situation in the city was getting more and more complicated, so the volunteers changed their focus to search for medicine. The pharmacies were already empty, and the supply of medication was not reaching the city. The only way to enter the southern part of Kherson region was through the Antonivskyi Bridge, which is located near Kherson, almost 90 kilometers from Skadovsk. Most people tried to leave the temporarily occupied part of the region through this bridge, but there were constant battles near it.

“We would leave the city to buy medicine, return and deliver it to the addresses. We also searched through social media among our friends for medicine for the thyroid gland, cancer and other serious diseases. When we ran out of medicine in the city, a volunteer delivered the medicines to us, transporting them across the Antonivskyi Bridge and returning with people to evacuate,” says Yevhen.

In April 2022, Yevhen, his wife and four-year-old daughter left the temporarily occupied Skadovsk.

“We didn’t know where we were going at the time. We were just driving past Kherson and Davydiv Brid. There was a contact line there, and many people tried to cross it through the occupiers’ checkpoints. We were stuck in a continuous line of cars for a very long time, and at the last checkpoint we were not allowed to pass for 40 minutes, but we were saved by our little daughter. She was crying a lot and could not calm down, which annoyed the Russians, and they let us through,” Yevhen recalls.

The couple came to Odesa, where they rented an apartment and started looking for a job. Yevhen’s friends continued to travel to Skadovsk, delivering humanitarian aid and working on the evacuation. Yevhen joined their team and started helping the people of Skadovsk. Since then, Yevhen has been actively volunteering with the NGO Zhyva.

“Later, in the summer of 2022, the exit from the Kherson region was closed completely. So we started helping with evacuations from other frontline cities and delivering humanitarian aid there,” Yevhen recalls.

On June 6, 2023, the Russians blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant.

“On that day, we had planned trips to the frontline Mykolaiv region, loaded the car with humanitarian aid, filled it with fuel and were ready to go. Standing at the gas station, I opened my Telegram and saw the news about Kakhovka HPP. We immediately changed our route to Kherson. On the way to Kherson, I called and texted all the volunteers I knew to cooperate and help together. And so it happened. We went to the first wave of evacuation and helped an elderly woman leave,” says Yevhen.

Yevhen contacted humanitarian centers in Kherson and arranged shelter for the evacuees. Other volunteers of the Ukrainian Volunteer Service had already brought inflatable boats, and together they helped people and animals get out of the water.

Yevhen says that over the past two and a half years, volunteering has become as integral a part of his life as his work and family.

“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.”

Author: Yehor Kuzmin