USAID/Ukraine’s “Forged Together” campaign highlights how Ukrainian volunteers are finding creative ways to overcome challenges caused by Russia's war – and in the process forging a stronger, more resilient Ukraine. Follow the campaign #forged_together @USAIDUkraine on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Anna Ryasna is a volunteer, civic activist, and member of the NGO Light of Culture. Anna was born in Lysychansk in Ukraine’s Luhansk region. She first started volunteering in 2014, when Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began. At that time, many internally displaced persons from the cities of Luhansk and Alchevsk fled to Lysychansk. Anna, then the director of the Lysychansk City Palace of Culture, focused her efforts on supporting people displaced by Russia’s aggression.
“From that moment on, the impulse to 'help others' was born in me," Anna recalls.
Later when full-scale war came to Ukraine, Anna herself was displaced, moving from Lysychansk to Dnipro. Soon after, she started receiving calls from people in the Luhansk region asking for help finding medicine, food and shelter. She gathered a team of like-minded people from Luhansk and set to work. Her group teamed up with the Dnipro Youth Council and the Luhansk Regional Administration to find a location to base their operations. By March, 2022, just weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion, they were already filling 10-ton trucks with food, hygiene products and other items bound for communities on the front lines.
A few months later, Anna became a coordinator for Stabilization Support Services’ humanitarian projects in Luhansk Oblast. Working with the SpivDiia Hub in Dnipro (part of a USAID-supported network of volunteer hubs), Anna helped residents of Luhansk region receive personalized aid boxes with the specific supplies they needed - all by filling out an online form.
Later, with the help of the USAID Democratic Governance East Project, Anna's team established a hub for young people from the Luhansk region. But the real test was creating a shelter for internally displaced persons.
“It was a real challenge, because none of us had any relevant experience,” Anna says.
The Luhansk Regional State Administration helped find premises and provided other support. The shelter has been operating for a year, and now houses more than 200 people.
The shelter is a three-storey building with a green area for events, an outside cinema, and a playground. Inside, there are living rooms and a kindergarten where residents can leave their children when they go to work. Residents handle cleaning, cooking, childcare, garbage collection, and other daily tasks by working in shifts. The shelter also offers round-the-clock medical and legal assistance.
Anna notes that the project received tremendous support from USAID, which allowed Anna and her team to expand the shelter from one floor housing 40 people, to a space that can accommodate 200 people at any given time. (Currently, about 160 people are staying at the shelter on a long-term basis, with the other beds reserved for people who are temporarily passing through Dnipro.)
We asked Anna about her vision of the future, both for her personal life and for her country.
“I would like to return to the Luhansk region as soon as possible to develop my home region,” she says.
“As for the whole country … We must invest not only in material things – we must invest in people. We already have certain achievements: dignity, respect for our defenders. We are not only fighting for values and cherishing our values, but we are developing values and setting an example of how to unite [around them].”
