Mobile storytelling
STORIES FROM UKRAINE
In September 2020, the NGO Internews Ukraine and its English-language outlet UkraineWorld established a mobile storytelling project called Stories from Ukraine, funded by the International Renaissance Foundation.
The project aims at breaking established stereotypes and negative perceptions about Ukraine abroad. For many foreigners, Ukraine is synonymous with war, corruption, poverty, and Chornobyl. Stories from Ukraine aims to shift these views. Through stories of struggle and success, we will tell you more about the people and projects that are transforming Ukraine today. Our project will share 60 video stories about progressive youth, technology development, anti-corruption endeavors, environmental initiatives, the protection of human rights, and more. Some stories have already been published.
One of the videos of the Stories from Ukraine tells about Donbas war veteran Yulia Kirillova, who helps women veterans to transition to civilian life. In August 2014, the war took her husband's life, prompting Yulia to join the 25th Separate Motorised Infantry Battalion. There, she served as a military clerk, a grenadier, a medic, and an ambulance driver. When Yulia returned from Donbas, she joined the Women`s Veteran Movement. Now Kirillova helps women veterans adapt to civilian life and honor the memories of their fallen sisters in arms.
The Stories from Ukraine project also tells about people who rebuilt their lives from scratch and started their own businesses. Here is a story about women who united to start their own farm. In 2014, Russia`s war forced Kateryna Tarasenko to flee her hometown of Alchevsk in eastern Ukraine and move to a remote village across the country in Lviv Oblast. There she met Kateryna Ilkiv, a widow and a mother of three children. With just a single goat at their disposal, they drew up a business plan and won a grant. Today, their home is a Soviet-era farmstead, where the women keep a lot of livestock to make cheese and other products. In the future, they plan to expand and move to their own farmstead.
Our story about the 3 AM Museum tells about challenges which blind people face every day in Kyiv. The Museum invites its visitors into a black room that recreates some everyday locations and helps visitors learn more in a gallery of sculptures. To experience the world outside as a blind person does, guests can walk around the city with a white cane. The 3 AM Museum gives people not only a new experience but helps them to understand the real life-struggles of blind people.
As part of the project, Internews Ukraine held a workshop on mobile journalism through which participants could receive grants for the creation of video stories. The best submissions have been published on UkraineWorld’s Twitter and Facebook pages.
In our Stories from Ukrainian Regions series, one can learn about 74-year old painter Oleksandr Vorona. In 2014 he was forced to flee Donetsk to his mother`s hometown of Korsun-Shevchenkivskiy in central Ukraine. The only things he managed to keep from his previous life were his paintings. Nevertheless, he continues to enjoy life and painting.
A journalist from Dnipro created a story about Ukrainian priest who turned a depressed village into a rapidly developing community. Another story from Kyiv oblast shows a Ukrainian family who turned their love for cheese into a business.
Other videos from our Stories from Ukraine project are already available on UkraineWorld’s Facebook page and on the Internews Ukraine YouTube channel.