June: a month of renovations

Here are our achievements for the first month of summer 2024. Our volunteers continue to work to help in the de-occupied areas of Kyiv region, we continue to develop our projects and said goodbye to one of them. Read on for the most important things this month.

Volunteers of the Reconstruction project, which repairs buildings damaged by the war and renovates critical public spaces, are actively working in two children’s bomb shelters that need to be transformed for the new school year. We will turn these two shelters into comfortable spaces where children will feel not only safe but also comfortable, as if they were in playrooms.

The first location was the bomb shelter of the Yalynka kindergarten in the village of Mykulychi, which has more than 60 preschoolers and temporarily serves as a home for local schoolchildren. During June, volunteers did most of the work to turn the technical room into a children’s bedroom and also started implementing heat-efficient solutions in the large hall, installing doors that will help improve comfort.

The second large-scale location is a bomb shelter in the Strumochok kindergarten in the village of Druzhnia, near Borodianka. The shelter, which has kept more than 200 adults and children safe for more than a month of occupation, needs to be renovated and turned into a comfortable space for young children. The total area is about 800 square metres, and we need to repair two large halls, two bedrooms, corridors and technical rooms.

Currently, work is underway on the first two rooms, which are being renovated by volunteers from the B50 community, local activists and parents of the children.

The Clean Up! project organised a two-day volunteer trip with a camp to help dismantle a house destroyed by shelling in the village of Potashnia (read the trip report here), continued to help with rubble removal in the village of Moshchun, and then took a break to restart and update the project.

With pride and a sense of accomplishment, we have completed the project “Stronger than bricks”, which travelled across Ukraine for 365 days, telling and showing the consequences of the russian invasion and the work of the B50 community volunteers. This project started its journey on the Glass Bridge in Kyiv and ended in the unbreakable Kherson.

During this time, “Stronger than bricks” is a photo exhibition that shows photos of houses destroyed by shelling in the Kyiv region and B50 volunteers helping in Moshchun, Irpin and other places where the occupiers have visited. The media project was presented at 26 locations! Read more about the project results, cities visited and feedback on the exhibition here.

Our other media project, “Chronicles of the Unknown Superheroes Ukrainians“, has completed its largest exhibition to date! For four months, Hamburg hosted our photo exhibition, which aims to demonstrate the will of Ukrainians to help each other in difficult times of war. 12 large banners were placed in the open air thanks to a collaboration between the B50 community, the Hamburg logistics centre Hamburger Hafen- und Lagerhaus-Aktiengesellschaft (HHLA) and the St. Nicholas Memorial (Mahnmal St. Nikolai).

The photo exhibition with the participation of our volunteers Yuliia Horbasenko and Svitlana Rudokvas was presented on 24 February on the anniversary of the russian invasion. The event was attended by Dr Martin Vetter, Chairman of the Board of the St Nicholas Memorial Society, and Angela Titzrath, Chairman of the Board of Hamburger Hafen- und Lagerhaus-Aktiengesellschaft. Consul General of Ukraine in Hamburg Iryna Tybinka and Vice Mayor of Hamburg Katharina Fegebank also addressed the opening ceremony.

We hope that the photo exhibition has fulfilled its purpose in one of Germany’s largest cities, showing the city’s residents and guests, including numerous fans from all over Europe who came to Hamburg for the Euro 2024 football tournament, not only the consequences left by the russian army on the de-occupied territories, but also that we, Ukrainians, are helping each other not only to eliminate these consequences, but also to do everything possible to restore and protect them. We thank our partners and everyone who took part in the creation and organisation of this event!

We thank everyone who joined our volunteer trips, our partners, and invite you to join us in helping!