“Healing Communities”: an educational project that transforms Ukraine

About the project

This project was created to help Ukrainian communities recover from the war and become stronger. It is inspired by the ideas of the Righteous Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, who believed that education and enlightenment are the key to a better and more authentic life.

According to Fr Lyubomyr Yavorskyy, Patriarchal Econome of the UGCC and one of the co-founders of the course, “It is very important for the Patriarchal Foundation ‘Mudra Sprava’ to develop projects not only of humanitarian response, but also of visionary and semantic dimensions. Then we work directly with people, restoring their hope and helping them to see the future. After all, without hope, it is impossible to see your own future”.

The “Healing Communities” educational project includes both educational activities and psychological rehabilitation, as well as spiritual recovery of each participant. For this purpose, for 5 days, participants take part in lectures by professional teachers, strategic sessions, discussions and spiritual conversations, visits to historical sightseeing in Lviv, and self-discovery.

The project was implemented with the support of the Renovabis International Charitable Foundation.

Project progress

The first phase of the project involved preparatory visits by project team members to different communities in the designated regions to select 10 communities with the greatest potential for participation. During these trips, the team met with representatives of frontline communities in the places of their residence. An interesting fact is that these were not always their hometowns or villages. For example, the Chernihiv community is currently located in Zaporizhzhia due to the occupation. However, this did not stop them from taking part in the project, and now they are taking care of their own community development. On the other hand, there were communities that did not attend the training because there were not enough stakeholders to participate, for various reasons.

The second stage was the training and rehabilitation at the Patriarchal House in Lviv. Staying in this place also meant getting to know the city itself and its unique architecture.

The third stage was a strategic session. It was again held at the community location, where the participants, together with other community members, strategized on further development. It is worth noting that this third stage may also lead the community to cooperate with the UGCC Consulting Centre or to participate in another educational project “Action in Hope”.

“In fact, many things that happen remain behind the scenes. We see a community that has come and that has reached its culmination today by completing the educational process. At the beginning, our experts go to the communities and communicate with people, encourage them and select them for participation. It is not so easy to go, to come, to convince people. In this time of war, you can often hear that it is not the right time. When we go through all these stages, which are left out of the picture, we build trust. After all, to learn well, you need to trust your teacher. Then you know where this teacher is leading you. And the Church is endowed with this teacher’s government. Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky did it in his time, and today His Beatitude Patriarch Sviatoslav and I are doing it. We offered him this format of leading people on the path to change. In return, we have other projects for further steps: a mini-MBA, as we call it, is an opportunity for personal development and business development. We will not let them go, because they ask us to be with them”, said the project coordinator Fr Lyubomyr Yavorskyy.

Participants

So, to select the participants for the 5-day module, the project team of 4 people made 14 trips, of which 10 communities have arrived in Lviv so far. Representatives of the Zelenodolsk community started the programme on January 26–30, 2024. Then the Kryvyi Rih community followed on February 14–19, the Chernihiv community from Zaporizhzhia Oblast on February 29–4, the Shyrokivska rural territorial community on March 15–18, the Pokrovsk community on April 4–8, the Novomoskovsk community on April 18–22, the Pidhorodne community from Dnipro Oblast on April 25–29, the Tsyrkuniv community on April 30-May 3, the Kropyvnytskyi community on May 9–13, and the Poltava community on May 17–21. We will tell you about the key components of their stay in Lviv further below.

The educational component

Speaking about the proposed educational process and the significance of the programme for the future of Ukraine, Andriy Rozhdestvenskyi, a lecturer in the leadership block and executive director of the UCU Leadership Center, notes that it would be useful for every community in Ukraine to listen to this programme. “This programme allows me to systematise my knowledge and my own life experience to understand how I can become stronger and more resilient. This is necessary to continue creating, earning money, fighting, working in the government, doing all the things that we do in our daily activities, but considering this enormous pressure that we have because of the war with Russia. So, this programme allows us to systematise our knowledge about finding these resources and even to restore this resource, because people are travelling to Lviv to participate in this programme, which is still more or less safe. We know that there are no safe places in Ukraine, but Lviv is much safer than Pokrovsk. Therefore, people have the opportunity to relax, rethink, learn, see other people, meet, strengthen their social ties and, of course, gain knowledge”, he shares his observations.

Андрій Рождественський

So, according to him, the importance of the “Healing Communities” programme is fourfold: “Firstly, it is important to go somewhere away from your permanent place of residence just to change the picture. Second, you need to systematise your knowledge and your experience, which are aimed at strengthening your own personal resilience and the resilience of the community. Thirdly, it is an opportunity to strengthen your social ties in the community in a completely different environment. And, of course, what is happening here in the classroom is only a prerequisite for creating a community development strategy in the frontline or de-occupied territory. Therefore, the training should be followed by some concrete actions on the part of the community”.

Psychological recovery

One of the programme’s components is the psychological recovery of participants. Anna Kartman, a clinical psychologist, CBT therapist, scheme therapist on the way to accreditation, and one of the programme’s specialists, notes: “Understanding of basic psychological processes is extremely important both for each community and for everyone. It is extremely important for us to understand ourselves to prevent many difficulties that may arise in case of untimely access to professional medical psychological help. Therefore, our task in the Healing Communities programme is to provide communities and the each one with a basic understanding of what mental health is, what are the components of stress resistance, what is behavioural and cognitive work, and ultimately how we can help ourselves to improve our own well-being. This is done to help many mental disorders that are ignored. That is why we study, teach and develop self-help skills that will help everyone to stand up, fight and be effective in dealing with the difficulties that arise on the path of life”.

Анна Картман

The psychotherapist adds that it is important for everyone to understand that mental health is as important as physical health. According to her, when a person has a toothache, they cannot ignore this pain and must seek help from a specialist. But treatment is much easier when we go to dentists on time and regularly. “It’s the same with mental health. If we respond to our condition in time, if we do not neglect our feelings, if we maintain our resilience, our skills and abilities that help us cope in different life circumstances, we will have more opportunities to endure and survive. And all of this is to have a fruitful and meaningful life even in dark times. Remember that everything will be Ukraine!” the expert said.

It is worth noting that most of the programme’s lecturers are members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This includes lecturers on the history of Ukraine. It is therefore significant that the history of Ukraine is taught today by those who are creating this history right now.

Cultural programme

In addition to the training, the participants were expected to participate in a cultural and spiritual programme, including visits to the Sheptytsky Centre of UCU and other historical and cultural monuments in Lviv: the central historical part of the city, the Memorial to the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, the Powder Tower, the Church of the Assumption, the Dominican Cathedral, Rynok Square, the Armenian Church and its courtyard, the Officers’ House, and the Opera House.

“I am very grateful to the ‘Healing Communities’ project for giving me this opportunity to visit Lviv and touch its history. Today’s excursion to the Catholic University was very interesting. I have already heard a lot about this university and even visited it. Today, however, we had a historical tour, which I would hardly have read on my own. So today, Mr Taras provided us with this information, telling us both funny and tragic moments. It was a lively conversation that I will remember for a long time! This is a very modern European-style institution, and at the same time, it is filled with a deep history of the development of our statehood and our education”, shares her impressions Olena Sdvyzhkova, a professor at Dnipro Polytechnic and a member of the NGO Ecotime.

Participants’ impressions

“It is very pleasant that the Patriarchal Foundation ‘Mudra Sprava’ gives not only bread to people, not only material assistance, but also help on a deeper level — psychological and spiritual. As soon as I learned about this programme, I became very passionate about making it happen in our community. Today we are a frontline town. Over the past two years, we have managed to do a lot for our military personnel and IDPs. So many of our active volunteers are already exhausting their resources and therefore need spiritual and psychological help”, said Father Ivan Talaylo, pastor of St Nicholas the Wonderworker parish of the UGCC in Kryvyi Rih.

Viktor Emelianov, a private entrepreneur from Kryvyi Rih, shared his impressions at the end of the five-day module: “This is a very in-depth project that gives us a lot of inspiration and tools for further action. I am myself a private entrepreneur. So, the knowledge and skills provided by the trainers were extremely important to me. I want to continue my business activities within my community. After all, today we must work together as one community. Only then will the community be healed and developed. Personally, I also found the lectures on the history of Ukraine, which we know so poorly for certain objective reasons, as well as because of our own laziness, extremely valuable. This is something that we need to study, because it gives us the future. It was also important to communicate with different people and trainers whom we usually cannot meet in everyday life”.

Liudmyla Veremiy from the Chernihiv community, who came for the third session, focused on the moment of healing, both physical and mental. “My main goal today at this training, as well as in general after the start of the full-scale invasion, is to acquire skills to heal my community after its liberation. We already know today that it [community] is physically traumatised by the ongoing fighting and mentally traumatised by the occupation that people are suffering from. At the same time, we also need this healing, because today we are refugees, no matter how ugly this word is. So, I came here to find this healing in myself and to give this healing to my surroundings and my colleagues”, said the deputy head of the Chernihiv community.

Father Lyubomyr Yavorskyy sums up the first results of the project. “We already see small success stories. It is right to talk about a project when we evaluate it and see the results. We already have hromadas that have gone from the very beginning to the end. And this completion is a strategic session in the community, where our experts come to help formulate a community development strategy. It is then that the community, having got to know each other, restored and healed, begins to plan the reconstruction of their own home. It is truly heartwarming when people come and say that they have been healed. We realised that the healing of the community happens when I am personally healed. And then I have power. This is a tremendous experience. They are inspired, they start to give birth to certain ideas, they start to formulate them and implement them. This means that this programme is achieving the goals we set at the very beginning of its launch”.