The Editor's Post: Four years of war: the Ukrainians bringing hope at home and abroad
As the war in Ukraine continues, we remain committed to highlighting the social innovators who are finding solutions to some of its devastating impacts. This week's view from the Pioneers Post newsroom.
As many people around the world noted, with sorrow, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this week, we were glad to be able to catch up with Vitalii Diakov, a Ukrainian lawyer who currently lives in Scotland with his wife, Hanna.
Vitalii and Hanna endured the trauma of fleeing their home in Odesa and eventually ended up in Dundee, alongside many other people from their homeland. Although they felt lost and uncertain about their future in a strange country with an unfamiliar culture, they realised that as lawyers with skills in mediation, emotional intelligence and conflict management, they could help themselves and others to rebuild their lives. They have now extended their services to other vulnerable communities, as well as establishing an income stream by offering mediation and conflict management training to educational institutions, local councils and others.
Our colleague David Lyons first met Vitalii at the Social Enterprise Scotland Summit in September last year, and he was struck by how the themes of conflict and mediation not only shaped Vitalii and Hanna’s lives in Ukraine, but are now forming the backbone of their enterprise as they use their skills and experiences for positive change. Read all about their journey in this week’s top story.
As the war in Ukraine continues, we remain keen to highlight the people who are finding solutions to some of its devastating impacts, building on our coverage to date.
For example, a few months ago, I met up with Anna Gulevska-Chernysh of Ukraine’s social enterprise support body, SILab, at Impact Week in Sweden. Our colleague Laura Joffre first spoke to her in March 2022, just a few days after the invasion, when she was co-ordinating a humanitarian effort to support internally displaced people.
When Anna and I talked last November, she described how Ukrainians were having to adapt to their “new normal life”, suffering the trauma of losses and injuries among their people, nights broken by missile attacks and constant power outages. Yet, in spite of her obvious distress at her country’s situation and the exhaustion that she and so many Ukrainians feel, she and her team are forging ahead with schemes to support mainstream businesses to become more inclusive, to help internally displaced women start their own micro-enterprises and to develop community rehabilitation centres for war veterans. “Social entrepreneurship is booming in Ukraine,” she told me, “because that is the response of the people to the situation.”
One year after the war began, our colleague Anna Patton highlighted several social ventures in Ukraine that had emerged or adapted what they were doing to support people to find work, shelter, social connections and more. And more recently Vadym Georgienko wrote for us about how a pilot of a ‘citizen token system’ was enabling Ukrainians to move from the uncomfortable position of dependency on outside aid, to become agents of change in their communities.
While many feel that the war is far from over, the stories of Vitalii, Hanna, Anna, Vadym and others demonstrate that there are people with the skills, resilience and passion to make a positive difference in what can often seem a hopeless situation. For Vitalii and his wife, leaving their home was one of the most frightening and shocking experiences of their lives, explains Vitalii. The war forced them to change everything. However, he says, “it also revealed the strength of people and communities. Even in displacement, we found ways to support one another, rebuild and create something meaningful”.
This week's top stories:
The Ukrainian couple using social enterprise to rebuild lives in Scotland
Is your impact business designed to survive – or to evolve?
Awareness of impact investing reaches record high in Japan in 2025
Top image: Ukrainian families visit Arbroath Abbey in Scotland as part of the Ukrainians Together project to learn more about Scottish history.
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