How a community fights for the life of its village

There are stories that stay in your heart for a long time. Such was the account we heard from Nataliia Mishchenko, head of the NGO "Bodakva: Revival," about her home village of Bodakva in the Poltava region, about its pain, its love and its fight for survival. We met Nataliia during the ImpactCheck project, and that meeting revealed to us the true strength of a community.

"The school in our village has always been a hub of civic activity, and the teaching staff were the initiators and organisers of educational, cultural, environmental and social projects on a volunteer basis. However, the reforms that took place in the country (administrative, land and educational) led to the loss of jobs and the departure of young families, and consequently to a decline in the number of children. The city authorities' unwillingness to keep the gymnasium open even for the duration of the war led to it being reorganised into a primary school with a preschool section and to teaching staff being cut. All of our environmental, ethnographic, cultural and educational initiatives were effectively left hanging. That was when the need arose to create a civic organisation that would have legal standing and could carry out projects systematically. The impetus for this was the residents of the villages in the starosta district rallying around the teachers while we were defending our school," Nataliia shares.

Today the organisation's mission sounds like a promise: "We are reviving Bodakva as a centre for preserving cultural heritage and developing the community, where Ukrainian Art Nouveau architecture, the nature of the Sula river region and an inclusive public space create new opportunities for life." Its core values are love for one's native land, inclusiveness, partnership, innovation, self-sufficiency and enterprise. And its slogan has become a motto for living: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."