From April 7 through April 9, the Eastern Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiatives held a training on writing essays, entitled “Tell the world about your experience of life under occupation.”

Over 60 people applied for the training. EUCCI selected thirteen participants from Kharkiv Region, Kherson Region, Chernihiv Region, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk. There were many young people among the selected participants, who had lived under occupation, experienced shelling, loss of relatives, friends or their homes.

The training was conducted by Slava Svitova, a writer, certified creativity expert, verbal skills and creativity trainer.

“Thank you for your trust in me. We had a wonderful synergy with the participants. This was my expectation and this synergy happened. And it's very cool,” she said.

The event will be followed by a number of essays that will be published online. They will also be translated into English and distributed to Western audiences. These will be stories about life under occupation, under shelling, the lost sense of home.

“A basement with spiders in a village house. Canned food. Bags of potatoes and onions. The smell of dampness and rotten potatoes... Life has ended. Survival has begun. Like an overly realistic video game. Today you need to complete a quest and find flour, tomorrow you have to make it to the shelter in time when the shelling starts, the day after tomorrow you have to hide all the items that may indicate your pro-Ukrainian position. Failure to complete any of the tasks is a lifelong ban in the form of death. I was seventeen at the time, but within a week I turned thirty-five mentally. I learned to make three loaves of bread from a kilogram of flour, dumplings from low-quality corn groats, to stretch a small piece of cheese for three or four days", - this is an excerpt from one of the essays drafted during the training sessions.

The participants left very warm feedback about the training and noted the importance of such training for recording war experiences:

“I had this story. Just a flow in my head. You helped me to write it for the first time so that it had a form, that everything was logically arranged.”

Separately, the participants praised the structure and practicality of the training: "I liked that there was a lot of practice. Every phrase and every comment of the trainer were right on point. They were not offensive. They were to the point. It's like showing a direction, they took us by the hand and led the way. That's why I’d like to submit the text now so that it can be proofread."

After the in-class training, the participants moved on to polishing their essays remotely. Stand by for the stories to be published soon!

"Empowering civil society for a transformation of commemorative culture - non-violent contributions to deal with Russia's war against Ukraine ", which is being implemented by the German NGO Kurve Wustrow and the Eastern Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiatives  together with other partners. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development within the “Civil Peace Service”.

The Eastern Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiatives (EUCCI) is a non-government human rights organization. Since the beginning of the war in Donbas, the Center has been working to restore justice and peace in Ukraine. The organization documents violations of human rights, provides legal assistance to victims and stimulates public dialogue on issues important for the restoration of peace and justice (https://totalaction.org.ua/).

Kurve Wustrow (Germany,) is a center for training and networking in nonviolent action.