‘Light is coming back’ says charity running summer camps for adults in liberated Ukraine villages

The charity wanted to bring back some fun for adults as well as children hit by the war

When Alyona Puzanova saw the joy on the face of an 86-year-old woman from a liberated village in the east of Ukraine as she painted flowers on a canvas, she knew the project had been a success.

"It was something else to see this older lady paint on fabric and tell stories about her childhood that literally brought her back to life,” she says.

The woman was one of around 60 adults and more than 150 children who took part in a series of summer camps this month run by Ms Puzanova, and her husband Slavik Puzanov, through their charity, Heritage Ukraine.

Women from previously-occupied villages work on crafts at Heritage Ukraine's summer camp.

The groups worked on crafts, danced and played games – including water balloon fights - in a bid to bring fun and regeneration to people living in an area of the country previously occupied by Russian troops.

The three day camps, along with a farming regeneration programme launched earlier this year to help villagers in the region, are funded by Scottish charity Blythswood Care, in partnership with Christian Aid.

The couple, who had worked with local people over the past three months to supply them with seeds and equipment for their smallholdings, saw a need for normality to be brought back to the regions, which had been decimated by over a year of conflict.

Some properties in the rural villages had lost their roofs and windows had been blown out by constant shelling. Aid workers from the charity, which has been based in the city of Odessa since its launch 17 years ago, worked to restore the homes and have since seen scores of people return to the area from other parts of the country, where they had taken shelter at the beginning of the war.

Adults and children both joined in the summer camp.

However, they realised that the adults – from elderly people to young parents of small children – needed some distraction from the difficulties of everyday life.

One woman in her 70s who attended the camp had been a refugee who had left the disputed, conflict-hit region of Nagorno-Karabakh in 1993.

"She said: ‘I ran away from the war and then here it hit me the second time’,” says Ms Puzanova. "We saw the need for adults to go back to life. They're so tired. Any project that has already been done, other social projects, they're always aimed towards children.

“So we gathered them together, we danced with them and then we would have a good chat. These people would remember their childhood, they would share their stories of their lives and the villages [before the war] and they would light up with joy, just remembering things.

Heritage Ukraine wanted to give adults a break from their daily lives.

"They told us: ‘We can work in the garden tomorrow - we have to do it every day, but you’re not going to be here every day.’ They were very thankful.”

Richard Lynas, senior programme adviser at Highlands-based charity Blythswood Care, says the charities’ work aims to change people’s lives from “simple survival mode” to making “something they can see hope in”.

He says: "The camps have brought people away from everyday life and sleepless nights and they have been able to have fun, play games, make crafts and spend time with people in similar situations to themselves and allowed them to create some sort of path in the middle of a terrible situation.

“In the middle of all this rubble and brokenness, mourning and tears words like hopes, dreams, joy and healing are inconceivable. At Blythswood, we are amazed every day by the work of Heritage on the front line.”

He adds: “It has been really humbling for us to see how the results of the spring project have helped people to see beauty and hope again. I guess for us, this good news project has been a bit like a phoenix that that has risen from the ashes and has brought at least a flickering light or restored an image of hope to those who are hurting.

"The work we have seen Heritage do and their unabating resilience has made us smile, and it has made us cry but we have been brought to our knees at what they have done for others and like the project the organisation has brought rejuvenation.”

Mr Puzanov says people living in the villages who have grown fresh produce using equipment and seeds from Heritage Ukraine are keen to share their goods with the charity workers.

“They want to give us and bless us with the things they have grown,” he says, recalling recent visits to villages where they had offered aid in the spring. “They want to give us cheese; they want to give us milk. They want to give us some of the fruits and the vegetables that they have.

"We don't need them, of course, because we have everything here [in the city]. But they insist and we take it because it feels good to them. It feels like they have grown things with our help and it gives them dignity. It is very touching, because you see their hearts being so open that they want to provide for us now.”

He says the populations of the villages have rocketed since the project began in April and people have begun to return from safe havens elsewhere in Ukraine and even abroad.

"In villages where there were 12 people, there are now more like 200,” he says. “We see people coming back and we see light is coming back.”