Today is the time of courageous heroes who defend Ukraine at the cost of their own lives and are devotedly fighting for a free future.

Since the beginning of the war, many Ukrainians have been faced with the question: “Go abroad and ask for refuge? Or become yourself in the position of a defender and help in your country in the way that you can?”.

From the first days of March 2022, five volunteers began to help with free accommodation and full provision of everything necessary for internally displaced persons. More than 500 refugees from regions where were active battles with the Russian occupiers received refuge.

The building on the basis of the children's camp was reopened on their own, repairs were carried out after a long conservation period, conditions were prepared for the refugees to live, a school and a kindergarten, a medical center, and an animal shelter were organized. People were provided with high-grade free food and treatment.

Volunteer activity has grown in scale and motivated people and businesses to join this mission. Therefore, it was decided to register the charitable foundation "Pereyaslav", which makes it possible to fully report to the law and society and provides an opportunity for everyone to join the help.

Pavlo Shkira, head of the Charitable Foundation "Pereyaslav", told why he decided to deal with the problems of migrants.

“This is our front – the front of work for people!

There are two fronts in Ukraine - the front line and the rearward, where the country is recovering, gaining strength and raising children.

Both fronts are effective only when they work faithfully, in tandem, their results are common, and the difficulties too.

It is impossible to beat the enemy, knowing that your loved ones are in trouble or millions of people are leaving the country.

Our goal is to save people, to save them physically, by providing them with shelter, help and hiding from trouble, perhaps the worst disaster that every person can see, to provide the right time for recovery, a calm life. The goal is to show by example that they are important, that Dasha from Liman will be happy with Valerii from Borshchiv, and Dasha’s family will have a happy day tomorrow in Ukraine, yes, not in her Liman yet, but in Pereyaslav, but in Ukraine, that there will be breakfast, and school, and rollers for kids, and cartoons, and peaceful sleep. We are refugees too, some of us already twice, someone from Irpin, someone from Donetsk region, someone cares a lot, and deeply imbued with the situation, but we all lost our usual life, which we built from birth. For all of us, without exception, this is a lifework and we want to give these people, these children a sense of safety and some kind of “normality”.

Our team is ordinary Ukrainians. It’s Pavlo, construction manager who left his job, and his focus is only on helping people restore their lives and homes.

It’s Anastasiia, a flight attendant, who now knows the answer to any question of our migrants and will arrange comfort for each animal, and recently also the godmother of the youngest 6-month-old resident of the camp. It’s  Illia, a professional teacher who helps families around the clock, identifies their needs and directs assistance. And Valerii, an industrial climber, and Ruslan who 24/7 treats animals and deals with a lot of administrative issues. These are cooks, educators, locksmiths, doctors, photographers, marketers, students, athletes, singers, managers, businessmen, IT people who have discovered new abilities in themselves - to work non-stop to be useful for our ordinary Ukrainians.

The destruction of infrastructure is destroying employment, which is pushing people to look for a better life abroad, or in big cities. We went through something similar at the beginning of Ukraine's independence, when it was possible to make money only in Kiev or cities with a population of millions, we are striving to develop small cities, to rebuild the concentration

Since the beginning of the war, Pereyaslav region has sheltered more than 5,000 Ukrainians, only our shelter has taken in more than 500 refugee people, which included a vulnerable category - family-type orphanages, families with many children, mothers with children who can stay in the shelter as long as necessary for a new start. These are people from the most affected parts of our country - Kramatorsk, Kharkiv, Irpin, Bucha, Izium, Kostiantynivka, Zaporizhzhia, Mariupol, Kherson and many others. According to internal surveys, most of them still do not understand how to live on, how to start working, where and by whom, how to raise their children and what to count on.

I believe that our initiative protects the family from going abroad and helps to preserve the nation of strong, sincere and talented people. Our assistance is not only emergency, it is strategic. We accompany the residents of the shelter in organizing work, training, internships, we provide opportunities for full adaptation and we want to make dreams of a new home come true.

We understand that the shelter is only a temporary solution to the problems, strategically it should be capital building. But it's already cold today, the destruction of houses by russians continues. We see the solution in the restoration of unused housing stock, most of these houses have access to water and heating. Yes, many people are already providing their homes, but the potential is there, and great, and the preparatory period is relatively short. Now we are working on creating a database of such houses which we plan to rehabilitate and we invite the volunteer movement with a similar mission to join the project. We must turn this energy of destruction into revitalisation as quickly as possible, without waiting for developers expecting a recovery of the construction market and new investments.