Themes by tag: women

Liudmyla Tabolina is a Kharkiv resident and teacher of Ukrainian language and literature. In 2022, when the full-scale invasion began, the teacher walked 11 kilometers every day, going through checkpoints and under fire, to get to school. Here she set up a shelter for residents of neighboring houses and a humanitarian headquarters. In early March, Liudmyla also started a canteen for local residents. There were many mothers with children in the shelter.

Liudmyla hid class journals, seals, documents, and personal files of children and staff so that the occupiers would not get hold of them in case the school was seized. It was only in September 2022 that the teacher decided to leave Kharkiv and move to the capital. Today, Liudmyla continues to teach, but in a Kyiv lyceum.

For reference: In September, Liudmyla Tabolina was put on the list of the 50 best teachers in the world according to the Global Teacher Prize 2023.

• casualties
• women
• Kyiv

Olha Pavlik does teaching, she spent more than 25 years in Zaporizhia working in this profession. Later, Olha started working for an NGO in green tourism. Eventually, together with her husband, she started her own project, The Potter’s House. Her husband was a potter, and Olha together with her daughter manufactured handmade souvenirs and ceramic jewelry pieces. At the outbreak of the all-out invasion, Olha’s husband enlisted in the army and went to Eastern Ukraine, while she stayed in the village, which became a frontline village. Those fleeing the Russian occupation could stay in a shelter on the territory of the Potter’s House. Later, Olha’s husband returned from the front line with an injury and several contusions. To fill the gaps in specialized education to provide rehabilitation for her husband Olha is getting a medical degree so that in the future she can invite her husband’s comrades-in-arms and other soldiers to the eco-homestead for rehabilitation. She is currently working on creating a rehabilitation project for the military. In addition, the Potter’s House already has an inclusive space for people with disabilities.

• psychological support
• volunteers
• women

Last December, Lviv resident Viktoriia Khemych was hit by a bus right while crossing a pedestrian lane. After the accident, Victoria’s leg was operated on several times, but severely injured limbs salvage was impossible, it was amputated. Victoria was admitted to the Unbreakable Center in Lviv, where she was fitted with a prosthesis. For more than six months, Victoriia underwent rehabilitation and mastered the use of her now mechanical leg. Afterward, she decided to stay at the Center, but no longer as a patient, but as a mentor. Viktoriia supports and counsels the Ukrainian military and civilians who have lost their limbs, coping with living in a new way and preparing to get prostheses.

• casualties
• women
• Lviv

On October 5, the American artist Colette Miller will create a mural on Arsenalna Square in the capital, which will be followed by an official unveiling.

She came to Ukraine to create a street art installation that will become part of the Global Angel Wings Project.

Her “wings” are already adorning the streets of Kenya, London’s Heathrow International Airport, a refugee camp and an exquisite wall of a modern estate in France.

Prior accreditation for the media is required.

For reference: The American artist also created the mural “Angel Wings” on Sicheslavska Embankment in Dnipro.

• culture
• women
• Kyiv

Anna Pavlus is 38. She is a fashion designer by profession. The woman worked as a custom tailor (she had her own workshop). In 2016, Anna fell and suffered a spinal cord injury and has been forced to use a wheelchair ever since. The woman faced the problem of uncomfortable clothes for people with disabilities. She herself began designing clothes more suitable for the sitting position of the body, since there was no such thing on the market in Ukraine. And then she started making the clothes to order.

With the beginning of the full-scale war, her production stopped for a month. In order to restore and increase the capacity, the woman received a state grant. And since March 2023, a sewing workshop has been operating in Kyiv region, where Anna sews adaptive clothes. Three more people work there, including a person in a wheelchair.

Anna plans to create a social enterprise to train and employ other people in wheelchairs.

• women
• Kyiv

At the time of the occupation, Viktoriia was the principal of the Kalynivka Lyceum of the Snihurivka City Council (Mykolaiv Oblast), as well as a chemistry teacher and the natural scence for kids. 

The occupied educational institutions’ principals suspended their work. However, Victoria managed to organize Ukrainian education for about 40 children.

Viktoriia and two other teachers held in-home classes according to an individual schedule to ensure that the students did waste an academic year. To prevent the occupiers from finding out about the educational work, they pass off their teaching activities as “providing consultations.” Teachers who had left the occupation sent assignments to Viktoriia, and she got online without Internet service in a garbage dump to send it to her students via Bluetooth.

Today, she serves as the Snihurivka Lyceum principal in the Mykolaiv region. The Russian occupiers wanted to introduce the educational process in this institution, but have failed miserably. During their retreat, they looted the lyceum, and even earlier they hit the institution with two S-300 missiles. Part of the school is still destroyed and they are trying to rebuild it.

Journalists can contact Victoria online or offline.

For reference: the Snihurivka community in Mykolaiv region was occupied from March to November 10, 2022. Four schools in Snihurivka were damaged during the full-scale invasion (one of them is beyond repair due to enemy attacks, and another is being designed with a bomb shelter and a digital educational center for the means of philanthropists). Filming the scene requires the Oblast Military Administration permission. 

As a reminder, Ukraine celebrates Teacher’s Day on October 1.

• children
• occupation
• women
• Mykolaiv

Larysa Zahryva has devoted 25 years of her life to education. She worked as a teacher, and in 2022 she took up the position of the head of the Center for the Provision of Social Services in Chernihiv Oblast. When the full-scale war broke out, the village of Mykhailo-Kotsiubynske, where Larysa lived and worked, was under occupation. For 37 days, she kept going to work and taking care of the elderly people who remained in the village. Larysa hid documents from the Russians and was threatened with a gun five times. The occupiers came to her house in the middle of the night and interrogated Larysa’s husband.

After the liberation of Mykhailo-Kotsiubynskyi, thanks to the support of the United Nations Development Program, Larysa managed to set up the Third Age University. Today, there are already several fields of study in the curriculum: the Faculty of Healthy Lifestyles, the Faculty of Philosophy, and the Faculty of Decorative and Applied Arts.

• occupation
• women
• Chernihiv

Mariia Yudina is an artist and designer. The girl comes from Berdiansk city, Zaporizhia region (currently under Russian control). 

Mariia faced the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion in Kyiv, where she came to bring an art project to life. Later, volunteers approached the artist with an offer to paint the remains of wrecked and damaged weapons. Since then, a one-off project developed into a regular basis art object-making. Mariia donates the painted shell casings, tubes, flasks, and remnants of rockets to charity auctions and fundraisers.

The artist mostly paints flowers on used weapons. Her slogan is: “They launch missiles, and I draw flowers on it.” Now the artist is also working on painting tubes with views of different cities: Zaporizhia, and Melitopol. Maria has also depicted landscapes of her native Berdiansk. She also plans to portray the Crimea landscape. 

• culture
• volunteers
• women
• Kyiv

Olena Chekryzhova is an experienced English teacher who lived in Donetsk Oblast until 2014. There, Olena managed to create one of the first online platforms for learning a foreign language. However after Russia attacked Eastern Ukraine, she left her hometown and kept on doing her business in Kyiv. In 2022, when the full-scale hostile invasion began, Olena got started with volunteering and later taught soldiers English at a military base to make it easier for them to work with the weapons that our partners were sending to Ukraine. Eventually, she created her project to teach English to the Armed Forces.

For information: Olena is in Kyiv, ready to talk to journalists, both online and offline.

• military
• volunteers
• women
• Kyiv

For ten years, dog trainer Larysa Borysenko searched and returned the bodies of dead soldiers and civilians to their relatives. In addition to working independently during search and rescue missions, the woman headed the Antares search and rescue squad. Larisa’s life almost ended in March 2023 in Kharkiv region, when she, along with her partner and a search dog, blew up on a tripwire. Larysa was seriously injured and was in a coma when she was taken to a hospital in Dnipro. The doctors did not expect a positive outcome, but Larysa woke up from a coma, underwent rehabilitation and returned to the Pavlohrad-based search and rescue squad a few days ago.

• animals
• casualties
• dead
• women