Themes by tag: women

Yuliia Koval boasts over two decades of experience as a certified trainer and holds the prestigious title of Master of Sports of Ukraine in sports and fitness aerobics. Currently, she is pursuing studies at the International Sports Science Association (USA). In 2018, Yuliia was enlisted as a sports commentator for the Games of Heroes project, and by 2022, she had ascended to the position of head coach.

According to Yuliia, training military personnel presents unique challenges compared to civilians due to the soldiers’ heightened motivation, as their physical well-being directly impacts their performance in competitions. Leveraging her training in the United States, Yuliia has devised wellness programs tailored for amputees. Furthermore, in autumn 2023, she initiated a complimentary rehabilitation program catering specifically to military personnel.

For reference: Residing in the Volyn region, Yuliia Koval welcomes online or offline inquiries from journalists. 

“Games of Heroes” stands out as Ukraine’s sole sports and training initiative dedicated to the rehabilitation of Ukrainian army veterans following severe injuries. Its primary objective is to facilitate both psychological recovery and physical rehabilitation among soldiers.

The inaugural Games of Heroes competition unfolded on May 21, 2016, and continued annually until February 2022 across various Ukrainian cities. Following a hiatus lasting nearly a year, the project resumed activities in January 2023.

• women

Lutsk resident Tetiana Pototska had been originally running a travel agency that specialized in organizing pilgrimage trips abroad until February 2022, Tetiana shifted her focus when the full-scale invasion began. Moved by a friend’s inability to transport her father’s body from Kharkiv to Lutsk, Tetiana stepped in to assist and has since been tirelessly evacuating fallen soldiers’ remains and transporting them to morgues.

Beyond her duties in retrieving the fallen, Tetiana extends her aid to Ukrainians trapped in occupied regions, particularly those with limited mobility, helping them return to government-controlled territory. Additionally, she devotes herself to caring for the children of fallen defenders, arranging celebratory events and outings to the seaside for them.

Those wishing to interview Tetiana can reach her both offline in Lutsk or through online channels. She is gearing up for another journey to Eastern Ukraine soon.

• dead
• volunteers
• women
• Lutsk

From March 1 to June 1, Modern Ukraine charity foundation will organize and conduct art therapy master classes in Poltava, Odesa, Vinnytsia, Fastiv, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Yuzhne, and Kyiv. There will be more than 20 master classes in total. Women who lost their loved ones in the war will take part in the events. The paintings created at the master classes will be shown at exhibitions in Dnipro, Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk, Novovolynsk and Volodymyr.

“Zhyva. True Love Stories” project is a volunteer initiative that helps Ukrainian women who are experiencing the loss of husbands and fiancés to rediscover the meaning of life and channel their pain into creativity.

More than 100 women have already participated in “Zhyva. TRUE LOVE STORIES” project – they created paintings in memory of their husbands and wrote their own stories for these canvases. Many paintings were on display in the regional exhibitions “PAINTING WITH HEART,” which took place during 2023-2024 in Kyiv, Lviv and Lutsk.

In December 2024, Modern Ukraine foundation will organize a nationwide exhibition featuring works by the participants of the “Zhyva” project in Kyiv.

Journalists are invited to learn more about the project and cover it.

• dead
• military
• women

Maryna and Mykola are both military, they met in 2019 in the army. The woman had two daughters from a previous marriage — Olena and Oleksandra. Mykola also has a daughter named Milana. At first, the family lived in Mariupol, Donetsk region (now the city is occupied), then they moved to Berdiansk, Zaporizhia region (now the city is occupied).

The couple served in the Azov brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine. In 2020, Mykola resigned from the Azov and joined the marines. Maryna’s contract ended in November 2021, but she did not want to leave her brothers in arms.

When the full-scale invasion began, Maryna, along with other Azov defenders of Mariupol ended up at the Azovstal plant (i.e. Iron and Steel Works where fierce battles with the enemy took place in the spring of 2022). Mykola wanted to switch with Marina and go to Azovstal instead of her. The woman persuaded him not to do this, because at the checkpoint the russians shot three guys who were on the way to meet their girlfriends, and many others who broke through to the plant went missing. Even then Maryna understood that she and other military personnel were unlikely to get out of the Azovstal alive. And she asked her husband to take care of her daughters. On May 8, 2022, the woman died in a fire at the Azovstal.

Now Mykola is fighting for the right to adopt his deceased wife’s daughters and give them a happy future. He is purchasing a three-room apartment for the girls in Kyiv region so they could live together as a family.

With the help of the Children of Heroes Fund, Maryna’s daughters received gifts and visited a rehabilitation camp, which helped them to distract themselves from terrible memories and disturbing thoughts.

For reference: the defense of Mariupol lasted 86 days. Following the order of the command, the Ukrainian defenders stopped putting up the defense, left Azovstal and surrendered to the enemy. On May 20, 2022, Mariupol was occupied by russia.

The Children of Heroes Charity Fund supports children who have lost one or both parents due to russia’s full-scale invasion. The fund offers financial aid as well as psychological and legal support. The organization helps these children with education and development until they reach adulthood.

As of the beginning of February, 7,889 wards are under the care of the Fund. Of them, 1,062 are IDPs, 151 children have lost their mother and father, 177 are children with disabilities, 970 are children from large families. Every week about 80 children are included into the list of the recipients of the fund’s help. Among the fund’s children, 88% are kids of military personnel, while the remaining 12% are civilians.

• casualties
• children
• dead
• military
• women
• Kyiv

Lana Teslenko lived in Kharkiv for over 20 years. There, the woman founded her own decoration agency and a recycled clothing brand. When the full-scale invasion began, Lana and her husband were in the city. At first, they spent the night in the subway, then a few days at a country house on the outskirts of Kharkiv, and finally they left to live with their parents in Khmelnytskyi. In the new place, the couple decided to reach a new level of recycling and build a house from materials found in a landfill. Windows, doors, the frame of the house – Lana found all this in the garbage. Only 20 percent of the building will be made of new materials, in particular, insulation for the roof and the roof itself.

The woman explains that one of the goals of such a construction method is to show people that not everything that ends up in a landfill is waste. Lana’s husband is an architect, so he is making the house plan himself. The home of the couple will be round and shaped like an egg, which for Lana is a symbol of a new life.

• women
• Khmelnytskyi

The founder of Repower charitable foundation, Maryna Sadykova, was an event organizer before the full-scale invasion. After February 24, 2022, her team began to help the military. Due to active volunteer work, the woman began to feel psychological exhaustion and constant anxiety. So, she went to the Carpathians to recover. This experience prompted Maryna to start a program of psychological support: at first, she wanted to help military volunteers like her, but the financial resources of the foundation were limited. That’s why the team decided to focus on medics who save the lives of soldiers at the front, and the Repower project was founded in Kyiv to restore the mental health of Ukrainian combat medics. Maryna’s team created a sustainable program of psychological support – a 10-day retreat in Sweden. Together with medics, Ukrainian psychologists go abroad as well. The 10-day program consists of psychological exercises, individual sessions, group meetings, art therapy, music therapy, etc. As of now, the charitable foundation has managed to organize 3 trips for 300 participants.

• doctors
• psychological support
• volunteers
• women

Antonina Demydenko lived with her son in Vuhledar, Donetsk region. (Her son was disabled, so Antonina took care of him).

On May 13, 2022, the enemy shell hit her apartment resulting in Antonina’s son’s death. The woman lost a leg and an arm.

Antonina is currently undergoing rehabilitation in the ergonomic therapeutic kitchen in the Superhumans Center in Lviv. She makes cookies and buns with one hand, then she treats the team with them.

Superhumans plans to publish a book of Antonina’s recipes in the near future (the initiative is implemented in cooperation with famous chef Olga Martynovska). Royalties from sales of this book will go to Antonina.

Meanwhile, the woman dreams of returning to Vuhledar to rebury her son, whose body was buried near the entrance to their building.

For reference: Vuhledar is a small mining town in Donetsk region that had about 15,000 residents before russia’s full-scale invasion. For a year and a half, the russian army continuously tried to capture the city. There is not a single building left standing in Vuhledar anymore.

• casualties
• women
• Lviv

On February 21, an interactive presentation of the photo project entitled “Stronger than the Elements” will take place in Kyiv. The event will include a presentation of an art calendar featuring servicewomen (including those released from captivity), veterans, doctors, volunteers and more.

Twelve Ukrainian women who took part in “Stronger than the Elements” photo project are depicted as various natural phenomena. In addition to the four main elements — water, fire, earth, and air — the women personify lava, downpour, avalanche, thunder, lightning, wind, and other formidable natural phenomena.

For example, some of the participants of the photo project include: “Lava” — Valeria “Nava” Subotina, defender of Mariupol, writer; “Lightning” — Dzvenyslava Sira, medical curator of the “Azov” Patronage Service, soldier of the 12th Special Forces Brigade “Azov” of the National Guard of Ukraine; “Hurricane” — Natalia Nahorna, military correspondent of TSN, 1+1 TV channel and others.

The initiative to bring these women together for a joint project belongs to Anna Murashenko, Founder of the YOUkraine Charitable Foundation.

The women who took part in the photo project, volunteers, soldiers and representatives of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War will take part in the event.

Funds from the sale of the charity calendar will be spent to purchase drones for the 72nd Mechanized Brigade named after the Black Zaporozhians.

The event requires accreditation.

• culture
• military
• volunteers
• women
• Kyiv

Svitlana Oleksandrenko, a senior inspector on duty at Police Station No. 1 in Korop village within the Novhorod-Siverskyi district police department in Chernihiv region, has taken on the responsibility of caring for five orphaned children amidst the ongoing conflict. Balancing her duty in daily patrols with the care of her own seven children, Oleksandrenko and her husband Serhii became foster parents to three orphans—two brothers and a sister—a year before the outbreak of full-scale war.

As the Ukrainian Defense Forces pushed back the Russian invasion from the northern regions of the country, two more girls, Katrusia and Sofiika from the Liubech community bordering Belarus, were welcomed into the Oleksandrenko family. Tragically, these girls lost their mother, who had been raising them alone, in June 2022. Upon learning of their situation from social workers, Svitlana and Serhiy wasted no time in extending their care to the sisters.

For reference: Ukraine’s troops retook the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions from Russian occupation on April 2, 2022, though the Russians had previously held approximately two-thirds of the Chernihiv region.

• children
• women

The “Bagira” kids and youth sports school, once a prominent Ukrainian women’s futsal and soccer club, faced glory in pre-war times, clinching championships and accolades in nationwide tournaments while competing in the Ukrainian Futsal Premier League. Now, those who stayed in the team now find themselves grappling with the aftermath of infrastructure destruction, compelling its members to train outdoors amidst the absence of basic amenities such as heating and electricity. 

Despite these adversities, with the youngest member being just 13 years old, the youth’s passion for soccer remains unwavering. Oleksandr Reznikov, a seasoned head coach in women’s soccer and futsal in Donetsk Oblast manages the team. 

Nevertheless, financial constraints pose a significant obstacle, hindering their ability to partake in competitions as they did before.

For reference: the town of Lyman in Donetsk Oblast, situated perilously close to the front line, endured occupation from late May to early October 2022, leaving 85% of its housing stock either destroyed or damaged. Once home to over 20 thousand residents, the town’s population now stands at approximately 5 thousand inhabitants remaining.

• children
• women