For Viktoriia Antoniuk, volunteering has gradually become more than a way to help others. It has become a conscious responsibility — taking on a specific task and seeing it through to the end. In the second part of our conversation, Viktoriia also reflects on Ukrainian volunteering from the perspective of people abroad and explains why support from foreigners is especially valuable — for them, helping Ukraine is a conscious choice to stand with people and a country they have no personal connection to. Sometimes, you become ready only after you start acting.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Viktoriia Antoniuk was studying marketing, working on her first projects, and only beginning to figure out what she wanted to do next. On February 24, she was in her hometown of Chernivtsi. When people forced to leave their homes began arriving in the city, Viktoriia and her friends joined volunteer efforts: sorting donations, packing humanitarian aid, and doing whatever was needed at the time. In the first part of our conversation, Viktoriia talks about her journey from taking her first steps in volunteering to working systematically on charitable projects, how her approach to helping others has changed over time, and the challenges she has faced along the way.

After suffering a serious injury, Ivan Roman went from a hospital ward to parasport – archery. Today, together with his wife, Larysa Vasyliuk, he returns every Saturday to the hospital in Lviv where he once underwent rehabilitation. But now they come not as patients, but as volunteers, helping other wounded service members, as well as civilians, believe that life goes on after loss. A bow, their own experience and the belief that good should be repaid with good have become the foundation of their volunteer work.

Volunteering can take many forms — from clearing neglected areas and planting greenery to researching historical facts in archives, environmental education, and therapeutic gardening. In Lviv, the ‘Rozsadnyk’ space has become a place where these areas intersect: here, the area is being restored, plants are grown for urban initiatives, and people are helped to socialise and recover through interaction with nature. A team of volunteers has been doing all this for six seasons now; they began by clearing a neglected part of the park and are now gradually transforming it into an open space for new volunteer initiatives.

The war has touched every one of us (Ukrainians). We have all changed, and so has the structure of organizations. This piece explores the changes that have affected our protagonist, Marta Cheban, and her volunteer work since the beginning of the war: how the environment in which she grew up has changed; how conflicts and differences in views emerged within a large community; how demographic losses affected the very structure of the organization; how she personally rethought her role — trying a new form of volunteering after a break — and what her life looks like now.

For some, volunteering began with the war in 2014; for others, in 2022. But volunteering existed long before that — that is an undeniable fact. Few people, however, know what it looked like back then. Marta Cheban, who we spoke to, is a volunteer through and through. Volunteering has become a way of life for her — one she chose long before it became a widespread phenomenon. It all began in Ternopil, at a time when volunteering was neither fashionable nor popular, when very few people were willing to help others for free. Yet Marta not only got started — she kept going and continued to take action.

In the first days of the full-scale invasion, Iryna Alekseeva was thinking only about how to save her two young daughters and survive the occupation of her hometown of Ivankiv in the Kyiv region. On the second day after the town was liberated, she and her husband set up a volunteer center that initially focused on humanitarian aid and, a month later, shifted its focus to weaving camouflage nets. Over more than four years, they have made nearly 100,000 square meters of camouflage nets, tailoring each one to the specific terrain — from the pine forests of the Chernihiv region to the open steppe of the Kherson region.

For Olena Mosendz, volunteering is inseparably connected to her personal story. She was born in the Kherson region, and on February 24, 2022, her hometown of Nova Kakhovka was occupied. Her mother, grandmother, brother and his family, and childhood friends remained there. Olena herself was in Lviv at the time, looking for a way to be useful and help those who had been left in the occupied territory. Together with a friend, she began delivering medicines to civilians in the Kherson region. When the routes for delivering aid were blocked, Olena shifted her focus to supporting military medics — something she continues to do today.

In the second part of our interview, Nadiia talks about friendship, the stereotypes and social isolation that people with disabilities still face, and the importance of treating everyone as an equal. She recalls meeting a 10-year-old girl from Donbas in Lviv, speaks openly about exhaustion and the moments when she feels she has little strength left, and shares what helps her keep going. Finally, she reflects on what lies at the heart of Ukraine’s enduring volunteer movement.

In the first part of our interview, Nadiia reflects on her life before the full-scale invasion, her struggle with persistent pain, and how she first became involved in volunteering. We talk about the people she has met over the years and the experiences that have changed her understanding of what it means to help. Nadiia also shares a simple but important truth: sometimes, the most important thing we can do for another person is simply be there for them.

From the very first days of the full-scale invasion, Yuliia Kachaniuk became part of Ukraine’s volunteer movement. She organized fundraising campaigns, delivered vital supplies to Ukrainian defenders on the front lines, and was joined in this mission by her young son, Makar. Reciting poems written by his mother, he helped raise funds to support Ukraine’s military. We spoke with Yuliia about how her journey as a volunteer began, the turning point that changed her life, the personal sacrifices she has made in her determination to help others, what gives her the strength to keep going even after the most difficult trials, and how Ukraine’s volunteer movement has evolved over more than four years of full-scale war.