Recovery in Ukraine, one life at a time

In the frontline village of Bezruky which sits in the Kharkiv region – just half an hour’s drive from the Russian border – the local school took a direct hit early in the war and shut its doors. Tanks rolled past close enough to hear.

Rebuilt windows and a reinforced structure brought it back. The basement became something else entirely; a shelter, then a gallery.

More than 15,000 children in the region are back in classrooms because of the project, run by the UN’s field agency for infrastructure and building projects (UNOPS) with European Union funding.

Teacher Yurii Tkalenko has spent 20 years in Cherkasy region classrooms. In 2025 he joined a training programme built around the New Ukrainian School reform.

“Learning never stops,” he says. “The new curriculum focuses on the child, adapting education to their needs.”

The programme is run by education and culture agency UNESCO, funded by the Global Partnership for Education, with Ukraine’s education ministry.

For Anastasiia, from the Donetsk region, having a baby meant leaving home for a protected maternity ward in Kharkiv, where she gave birth to twin boys.

“I was afraid to give birth. But life goes on,” she says. “The doctors truly brought us through.”

The UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA, working with the EU, backs maternity units like hers across the frontline.

Childcare is often what decides whether a mother can work at all. The ILO’s Nanny School has trained 80 women to care for children aged nought to three; nearly half found jobs soon after certifying. 

It is a small programme, but one built to expand, moving women out of informal work and into something steadier.

In Kryvyi Rih, Oksana now drives one of the city’s longest bus routes, after training through UN Women’s She Drives project. She had worked as a cargo clerk and doubted she would even pass selection.

‘For many passengers, it’s still unusual to see a woman driving a bus, but their gratitude motivates me,’ she says. ‘If you want to do something, don’t be afraid to try. I wanted to change my life, and I did.’

In Zaporizhzhia, hospital director Hanna Makarenkova has spent the war treating blast injuries and receiving evacuees from Mariupol – more than 25,000 patients since the full-scale invasion began, often through bombardment and blackout.

‘My colleagues give me the strength to keep working,’ she says. ‘Their tireless work, their dedication to the cause, is what motivates me.’

New independent power units, funded by the EU and installed by UNDP, now keep her equipment running when the grid fails.

In Kostiantynivka, Oleksandr lost both legs and an eye in a drone strike. His wife, Nataliia, has spent three months at his side through surgery and relearning – how to balance, how to move into a wheelchair, with a physical therapist named Illia.

‘Movement is life,’ she says. Then, of the road ahead: ‘I think everything will be alright for us. We’ll live and enjoy life. Because life goes on.’

The UN’s World health Organization (WHO), funded by the EU, has now trained more than 300 rehabilitation specialists across Ukraine to fit and adjust wheelchairs, nine of them now training others in turn.

None of this undoes what the war has taken. But it is what rebuilding looks like up close.