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.
Each day, Serhiy Sobolev and Volodymyr Sava help Ukrainians get out of harm’s way.
Serhiy, who moved with his family from Slovyansk to Dnipro during the early days of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, was looking for a way to help others affected by the war.
“That’s when I decided to volunteer,” he says, looking back on the time after he moved to Dnipro. “But how could I help? What could I do? I realized there was an urgent need to evacuate people, so I offered my help as a driver.”
That’s how Serhiy became an active member of the NGO Help People, a USAID-supported civil society organization. There, he specializes in helping evacuate people away from hard-hit areas to safety.
Volodymyr, a native of Kharkiv, could not stand aside either.
"The desire to help people inspired me to become an evacuation driver," he recalls. “From the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, I was in Kharkiv and every day I took people out of the areas that were being shelled in my own car.”
In addition to supporting evacuations, Volodymyr also delivers humanitarian supplies and helps displaced families find housing.
“I simply cannot sit idly by while my country is at war,” he explains. “I'm making at least some contribution to our victory."
Serhiy doesn’t consider what he does to be just a job,
“because our mission is much bigger. We have to work with people, calm them down and support them. We help people move their belongings, we take people out of basements, sometimes under fire. I may have to carry and comfortably place a disabled person in a car, or to calm a woman who starts crying in the middle of an air strike. We are evacuation drivers – this is important work.”
Needless to say, the work takes a psychological toll. Serhiy’s wife tells him his hair is turning gray. But there is a silver lining. Through his work, Serhiy has seen so many Ukrainians come together, care for each other, and offer up their talents and efforts for free, for the benefit of society.
“I have reconsidered my attitude towards people. I also saw and realized how beautiful our country is. Now I have the opportunity to visit many places I've never been to in my entire life!" he says.
As Serhiy and Volodymyr, like other Ukrainians, confront the daily challenges and hardships of life in wartime, they also look to the future. Serhiy says the most important thing after winning the war is fighting corruption, which he views as a factor that enabled Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Once corruption is defeated, he believes, there will be reconstruction, the restoration of cities, and prosperity for the Ukrainian people.
Volodymyr, in turn, looks toward a future in which Ukraine becomes a part of the European family, although he acknowledges this will be a difficult process that will take some time. However, he points to the challenges that Ukrainians have already overcome:
“After this,” he says, referring to the war, “we will be able to cope with any difficulties that come our way.”
