Valentyna Kostočka, a school principal and local deputy from Sakhnovshchyna in the Kharkiv region, created a charitable foundation to help people affected by the war.

“When we woke up on the morning of February 24, 2022, to the sound of explosions, everyone who could called me. The main question was what to do and how to escape this nightmare? We decided to meet in the center of our town and discuss further actions. Instead, we saw our military there. We asked the guys what help they needed. They replied that they needed this and that. Of course, we quickly organized and helped. Within a few days, many volunteers joined us, and by then, people from Kharkiv, which was being increasingly shelled, started coming to us in large numbers. Our activists began looking for medicines, food, and also housing for the displaced. This is how the history of our charitable activity began,” says Valentyna.
After two years of full-scale war, the “With a Heart for the People” foundation continues to work and receive evacuated Ukrainians from Vovchansk. The constant needs are food, medicines, clothing, bedding, and various household items, as people left their homes with small suitcases—whatever they could take and carry. Eighteen volunteers search for, buy, unload, and distribute all these items. The team also travels to frontline and de-occupied territories, where fighting is ongoing, but civilians remain.
“We look for such villages where no one has passed for a long time; there are no roads. Large organizations usually leave aid in accessible and large towns. For example, there is a remote settlement where everything around is mined, where 15 people live, and nearby in the hinterland, there is another one where 5 people still live—what humanitarian aid can there be? Usually, these are elderly grandfathers and grandmothers who have nowhere to go. And they don’t want to spend their remaining years in someone else’s houses. So we provide them with food and everything we can,” shares the founder of the “With a Heart for the People” foundation.
In remote villages, not only the elderly who survived the occupation in basements live, but also families with children. Parents took the children away, and after the liberation of Ukrainian territories, they returned to their native homes for various reasons.

“There are children whose parents returned them after de-occupation. And there are children who were in basements all the time during the occupation. When we arrived on the fourth day after our military entered the village, we saw a little boy dressed in huge men’s family shorts. Kolya’s mother said that the enemies took all the clothes, so her son walked around in what was left. The next time, we brought children’s clothes and everything necessary,” recalls Valentyna Kostočka.
In those places where the volunteers go, there is not a single surviving house. People survive as best they can. Valentyna says that it seems the children in those villages are no longer afraid of anything. They can identify the types of weapons by sound. However, the founder of the charitable foundation is confident that there will be a great need for psychologists and professional support for adults and children. Those who lost relatives, especially children or grandchildren, and experienced the horrors of war—these people keep everything inside. And there are those who did not see the war. How will they find a common language when they live behind one fence? It is necessary to learn and know how to communicate carefully and safely without traumatizing each other.
“There are many stories about the death of children. A mother left her child with her grandparents because she thought the enemies wouldn’t enter the remote village. When people saw that the neighboring country’s soldiers were approaching, they decided to evacuate their granddaughter. The enemy tanks did not let the car pass, even when the grandfather said there was a child in the car. Later, some soldiers let them pass, but others shot after them. The grandfather ran to the hospital with the wounded child in his arms but didn’t make it—the little granddaughter died. Unfortunately, now our reality is such that almost every family has grief,” says Valentyna.
During this telephone interview, Valentyna pauses our conversation several times—local children come to the door of the charitable foundation asking if they can take a fluffy bunny.
“War is a great tragedy. And when in the midst of hell there is an opportunity to bring happiness to children—it brings joy. It seems like a simple little toy, but people who evacuated in a hurry and didn’t even take socks, and now are left without work, cannot afford toys from stores, it’s an exorbitant luxury in our times. We are very grateful to the “Global2000 for Children of Ukraine” charitable foundation for allowing us to distribute toys not only to displaced persons but also to local children—this is about unity, which is extremely important,” notes Valentyna.

Currently, 1,700 internally displaced children live in Sakhnovshchyna. Overall, the “With a Heart for the People” foundation takes care of about 2,000 children, including those in de-occupied villages. Every day this number increases because the war continues.