For children with disabilities near Ukraine's frontlines, volunteer care has become a lifeline and for none more so than 16-year-old Ivan, who lives with cerebral palsy.

Donetsk

Russian forces have invaded Ukraine from land, air and sea with strikes causing widespread damage. Global leaders have condemned the move and imposed sanctions.

Ukraine Invasion

Volunteers offer lifeline to Ukraine's disabled children

Fewer than 20 miles from the front line in eastern Ukraine, volunteers Svetlana Kozun and Valeria Bezkluba are visiting 16-year-old Ivan. The teenager, who lives with cerebral palsy, is one of around 500 children being helped by volunteer collective Base UA. The organisation aims to foster creativity and communication among children, including those with special needs in Donetsk. He's a very interesting and extraordinary boy. I think he has a very interesting mind. We all liked him right away. We started to think how we could help him. Now we understand that what he probably needs most is quality time spent with him, just conversations, exercises. Because he is grown up, it is quite difficult to have educational things with him, learn to read and to write. Because he says, no, let's do something else. Let's do something cool. But it is cool just to spend time with him. Ivan's hometown of Tetianivka was badly damaged by fighting in the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion. For March of 2022, the Russians were less than a mile from the town, and the constant shelling frightened him. Almost every house bears the scars of war, and locals say fewer than 200 of 750 residents remain. Although Ivan and his family were briefly evacuated to nearby Dnipro, they returned home after the Russians were pushed back in Ukraine's counter-offensive. Volunteers now visit Ivan twice a week and provide valuable face-to-face time with him. Since Ivan doesn't go to school, the volunteers are the only people who spend regular time with him outside of his immediate family. I don't just want to do this to tick a box. I want to really help. I want to be a person he trusts, so he can talk to me and maybe trust me with something. When they're not going on field visits, the volunteers hold art classes and film viewings for children in a makeshift cultural center in Kramatorsk. Although the children of Kramatorsk have better access to resources than their peers in villages, they still lack in-person contact. That's something BASE-UA's co-founder Anton Yaremchuk believes doesn't get enough attention. We try to find a program or an approach for every child to be able to fulfill their potential. They don't know what they're interested in, what they want to do in life, because they've been absolutely isolated for many years. Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the war, children in the region have not been in a learning environment with their peers since 2020.

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Ukraine Invasion