Building a Refuge in Dnipro: An Interview with the MIRAS Foundation
By Matthew Parish
Saturday 31 October 2026
Dnipro has acquired a peculiar role in Ukraine’s war. It is simultaneously a major city carrying on with the ordinary business of urban life and one of the principal staging grounds between the relative security of central Ukraine and the dangerous territories further east. People arrive from Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions with suitcases, plastic bags or sometimes virtually nothing. Soldiers pass through. Ambulances move westwards. Humanitarian organisations move in the opposite direction.
This has created an ecosystem of charities, churches, volunteer groups and informal networks that is not always visible to outsiders. International organisations inevitably attract the greatest attention because their names and budgets are familiar. Yet much of the mundane work of sustaining people displaced by war is undertaken by Ukrainian organisations that existed before February 2022 and subsequently transformed themselves in response to circumstances none of their founders could have anticipated.
One of these organisations is MIRAS, a charitable foundation based in Dnipro. Its origins lie not in war relief but in helping disadvantaged children. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, however, its work has expanded into humanitarian assistance, evacuation and support for internally displaced people. One of its principal current projects is a shelter for mothers and children.
I put a series of questions to Dmytro Kobchenko, the Director of MIRAS, about the organisation’s history, the changing humanitarian environment in Dnipro and what happens to displaced people after the dramatic moment of evacuation has passed. The interview was conducted in Ukrainian has been edited lightly for clarity.
Matthew Parish: Tell me briefly about MIRAS. When was the organisation established and what was its original purpose?
Dmytro, MIRAS: The story of MIRAS began in 2017 with a small group of people who wanted to help children and change their lives for the better.
Initially we worked mainly with children from disadvantaged and low-income families. We organised children’s events, workshops, creative activities and residential camps. We developed the programmes ourselves, assembled teams of volunteers and arranged transport, accommodation, food and activities.
We tried particularly to include children who would not ordinarily have had an opportunity to go on holiday or participate in such activities.
We also found the funding ourselves. We approached friends, acquaintances and relatives and asked whether they could help pay for one or two children’s places. In this way, through small steps, personal contributions and volunteer work, we were able to organise entire camps.
My own history as a volunteer began when I was 14 and started helping at children’s camps. Eventually it became much more than volunteering. It became my life’s work.
I have always believed that a true vocation involves working not simply for money but for some higher purpose. When you see the results of your work, see children’s happiness and understand that what you are doing really is changing somebody’s life, it provides a particular sort of satisfaction that cannot be measured in money.
Our activities gradually expanded and in 2017 we formally registered MIRAS as a charitable organisation so that we could develop this work systematically and help more people.
Matthew Parish: What are MIRAS’s principal activities today?
Dmytro: Today our principal activities include providing humanitarian assistance to people affected by the war and supporting internally displaced people and families who have lost their homes or livelihoods.
We operate a shelter for mothers and children facing difficult circumstances. We support low-income families, single mothers and elderly people. We provide meals for people in need and we operate a children’s club offering developmental, educational and creative activities.
Matthew Parish: How did MIRAS’s work change after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022?
Dmytro: Before the full-scale invasion, most of our activities concentrated upon children, young people and supporting families. After 24 February 2022, everything changed dramatically.
We had to redirect a significant proportion of our work towards responding to the humanitarian crisis. We began actively assisting people who remained in dangerous areas of Donetsk region, organising evacuation journeys and delivering food and essential supplies.
During the first months of the full-scale war, thousands of people received assistance from us. We worked in various parts of Donetsk region, including the Bakhmut district, Kramatorsk, Vuhledar, Pokrovsk, Siversk and Sloviansk.
In 2022 we also opened a shelter in Dnipro for internally displaced people. We could see how urgently people needed somewhere safe to live after evacuation.
In 2023 we opened a separate shelter specifically for women with children facing difficult circumstances. This was the next stage in developing our social work. We realised that many women needed more than temporary accommodation. They needed a safe environment, social support and an opportunity to rebuild their lives.
In 2025 we took another important step and purchased our own buildings and land in Dnipro for the development of the shelter and our other social projects. We are gradually renovating the premises so that we can create a comprehensive living environment for mothers and children as well as provide assistance to other vulnerable groups.
The war therefore changed the scale and direction of our activities, but it did not change their fundamental purpose: helping people.
There is an important distinction buried in that answer. Evacuation is commonly imagined as the end of a humanitarian emergency: a person is removed from a dangerous town and brought somewhere safer. In reality it is frequently only the beginning of another set of problems. A person who escapes the front may have lost a home, employment, possessions, documents and the social networks upon which ordinary life depends.
Dnipro experiences this phenomenon particularly intensely because of its geography. It is sufficiently far from much of the fighting to function as a humanitarian centre but sufficiently close to the eastern and southern fronts to receive people directly from communities under threat. The result is that charities such as MIRAS increasingly find themselves engaged not merely in emergency relief but in the much more difficult business of reconstructing ordinary lives.
Matthew Parish: Who are the principal beneficiaries of your work: civilians, internally displaced people, military personnel, hospitals, children or other groups?
Dmytro: Our assistance is directed principally towards civilians affected by the war, internally displaced people, children and families facing difficult circumstances.
We pay particular attention to women with children, single mothers, large families, elderly people and low-income households.
As part of our humanitarian work we have also cooperated with medical institutions and provided assistance to military medical units.
It is important to us that help reaches those who need it most, irrespective of where they live or their social status.
Matthew Parish: Which of MIRAS’s current projects do you consider the most important?
Dmytro: One of our most important projects today is the Mother and Child Shelter in Dnipro.
It provides a place where women with children who have experienced violence, loss of their homes, forced displacement or other difficult circumstances can obtain safe accommodation and social support.
In 2025 we purchased our own buildings and land so that we could expand this project and help more families. We want to create a comprehensive social centre incorporating accommodation for mothers and children, a children’s development centre, a daytime facility for women who have experienced domestic violence and other social services.
We are gradually renovating the premises. One room has already been renovated and a family is living there. Our social canteen and children’s club are also operating on the site.
This project is particularly important to us because we do not simply want to give somebody temporary accommodation. We want to help people recover, become independent and return to a normal life.
We believe that by supporting mothers we help preserve families and protect children from ending up in institutional care. That is why this project is particularly important to us.
Matthew Parish: What are the greatest difficulties facing your organisation in Dnipro and Dnipropetrovsk region?
Dmytro: The greatest problem today is insufficient funding and a lack of long-term partners for our social projects.
The situation with the new shelter is particularly difficult. We have purchased the buildings and land. We have plans and understand how the facility should operate, but the premises are not yet ready to accommodate people properly.
There is currently no water supply in the building. We need to install heating, construct sanitary facilities and complete the renovation of the bedrooms.
We continue to undertake repairs using our own resources and whatever assistance we can obtain, but unfortunately we do not currently have sufficient financial support or permanent partners who can help us complete the work.
This is particularly difficult because the need already exists. Women with children approach us looking for somewhere safe to live, but because the renovation is unfinished we cannot accommodate everybody who needs our help.
We have even had to cover some expenditure using credit. At the same time, the foundation continues operating the social canteen and children’s club, assisting families and supporting people in difficult circumstances.
It is therefore very important for us to find international partners and benefactors who can help us finish the shelter. We have already taken the substantial step of purchasing our own premises. What we need now is support to turn them into a fully functioning safe environment for mothers and children.
Matthew Parish: Where does MIRAS obtain its funding and humanitarian assistance? Do you work with international donors, foreign charities or overseas volunteers?
Dmytro: Our activities are financed through donations from private individuals and support from Ukrainian churches, charitable organisations and international partners.
We have worked with organisations including Samaritan’s Purse, UNICEF, DanChurchAid, Giving Heart International and Operae Life ETS. We have received humanitarian supplies, food, materials and support for individual social projects.
Private benefactors also play an important role through their donations.
Nevertheless, we do not have permanent guaranteed funding. Most of our projects depend upon fundraising and finding partners. Cooperation with the international community is therefore extremely important to us.
This financial uncertainty is one of the paradoxes of humanitarian work in Ukraine. Emergency relief can attract substantial international resources because the objective is immediate and readily understood: evacuate somebody, deliver food, supply medicine or repair damage. The slower process of rebuilding a person’s independence is less dramatic and potentially much more expensive.
A building without water, heating or completed bathrooms is not an abstract development project when there are mothers asking whether they and their children can sleep there. MIRAS’s experience illustrates the uncomfortable gap between owning the infrastructure necessary to provide assistance and possessing the recurring resources required to make that infrastructure work.
Matthew Parish: How important are local Ukrainian volunteers and civil society organisations in Dnipro compared with international organisations?
Dmytro: I believe local Ukrainian volunteers and civil society organisations play an extraordinarily important role. They are often the first to learn what people need and they can organise assistance extremely quickly.
International organisations have substantial resources, experience and the ability to provide humanitarian assistance on a large scale. Local organisations, however, understand specific conditions better. They know the communities, have direct contact with people and can continue supporting them over extended periods.
In our experience the most effective arrangement is one in which international partners provide resources while local organisations undertake the direct work with people. These two levels of assistance do not compete with one another. They complement one another.
Matthew Parish: Has the presence of foreign volunteers and international humanitarian organisations in Dnipro changed over the past few years?
Dmytro: In our experience, international attention towards Ukraine was extraordinarily high during the first months of the full-scale invasion. There were many foreign volunteers, humanitarian missions and organisations actively providing assistance.
Over time the nature of this presence changed. Some volunteers returned to their own countries. Some organisations reduced or altered their programmes while others remained and concentrated upon longer-term humanitarian projects.
We understand that the international community also faces limited resources and must distribute assistance amongst different humanitarian crises.
But the war has not become any less difficult for Ukraine. The need for support remains very substantial, particularly amongst people who have lost their homes, employment and their former lives.
Matthew Parish: How does Dnipro’s proximity to the front affect your daily work and the needs of the people you assist?
Dmytro: Dnipro remains an important humanitarian centre for people leaving frontline areas in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and other regions.
Being close to the front means that we constantly experience new waves of evacuation, increasing numbers of people requiring assistance and unpredictable circumstances.
For many people Dnipro is the first place where they can obtain help after leaving a dangerous area.
We see that people need much more than food and clothing. They need accommodation, medical and psychological support, assistance with documents, opportunities to find employment and a chance to rebuild a normal life.
For our organisation this means that we have to remain flexible and constantly adapt our work to new needs.
Matthew Parish: Does MIRAS work directly with people evacuated from frontline areas? What are their most urgent needs today?
Dmytro: Yes. Helping people from frontline territories is an important part of our work.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion we have organised evacuation journeys and delivered humanitarian assistance to people remaining in dangerous settlements in Donetsk region.
Today many evacuees arrive in Dnipro with virtually no possessions or savings and often without any idea where they will live next.
Their most urgent needs are safe accommodation, food, clothing, hygiene products, medical assistance and social support.
Women with children, elderly people, people with disabilities and families who have lost the ability to support themselves are particularly vulnerable.
We try to help not only at the moment of evacuation but afterwards, when people begin building their lives somewhere new.
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This may be the most important point in the interview. War creates spectacular images, but humanitarian crises mostly consist of unspectacular problems. A person escaping shellfire may subsequently discover that the principal obstacles to rebuilding a life are rent, paperwork, childcare, employment and the absence of people upon whom they can rely.
The work therefore changes as the war becomes prolonged. The emergency humanitarian model of 2022 cannot simply be repeated indefinitely. Ukraine increasingly needs durable institutions capable of supporting displaced people through the transition from emergency assistance to independence, while remaining capable of responding when another town comes under threat and another wave of evacuees arrives.
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Matthew Parish: What assistance do charitable and volunteer organisations in Dnipro most need from the international community now?
Dmytro: Above all, I think we need stable and long-term support.
It is important for international donors to support not only short-term humanitarian actions but also projects that help people rebuild their lives.
For our foundation, particularly urgent needs include financing the renovation and fitting-out of the Mother and Child Shelter, support with heating, water and utility costs, food for the social canteen, transport costs and evacuation journeys, children’s and social programmes and funding for specialists who work directly with vulnerable people.
Financial assistance is not the only thing that matters. Partnership, exchanges of experience, technical support and assistance with organisational development are also important.
Local foundations possess knowledge and experience of working directly with people, but they frequently lack the resources necessary to implement all the projects that are needed.
Matthew Parish: Is there anything about life in wartime Dnipro, or about Ukrainian civil society, that you believe foreign journalists and the international public frequently misunderstand?
Dmytro: I sometimes think people abroad do not fully understand how long-lasting the consequences of war are for ordinary people.
When people talk about war they usually mention attacks, destruction and casualty figures. But there is another side: thousands of people have lost their homes, employment, familiar surroundings and their sense of stability.
For many families, war does not end after evacuation. It continues every day through the search for accommodation, food and employment, the challenge of providing for children and coping with the psychological consequences of what they have experienced.
There is another important point, which is Ukrainian civil society. Many local organisations operate under extremely difficult conditions, often without stable funding, yet they continue helping people.
I would like international audiences to see Ukrainians not merely as people who need help but as people who themselves help others every day, come together and find the strength to continue working even in the most difficult circumstances.
Matthew Parish: Finally, what would you like to say to readers of the Lviv Herald and to the international community about Dnipro, MIRAS and the people you help?
Dmytro: Dnipro is a city of strong people who, despite constant danger, continue living, working, helping one another and supporting those forced to leave their homes.
At MIRAS we believe that even in the most difficult circumstances nobody should have to face their problems alone.
This is particularly important for children and mothers who have experienced war, loss of their homes, violence or other difficult circumstances. Childhood should not be lived in constant fear. Every child deserves safety, care and an opportunity to develop.
That is why we continue working, developing our social projects and creating places where people can receive not only material assistance but also support and hope.
We are extremely grateful to all the international partners, benefactors and volunteers who remain alongside Ukraine.
We would also ask the international community not to forget Ukraine. The war continues, people’s needs remain enormous and support today can change somebody’s life.
We cannot stop the war ourselves. But together we can ensure that as many people as possible are not left without assistance, protection and hope for the future.
There is a temptation, after years of war, to measure Ukraine’s humanitarian predicament principally through numbers: numbers displaced, numbers evacuated, numbers of buildings damaged and sums of international assistance committed. Statistics are indispensable, but they can obscure what humanitarian work actually entails. Eventually every large number resolves itself into individual people asking remarkably ordinary questions: where will I sleep, how will I feed my children, where can I work and how do I begin again?
MIRAS began with children’s camps and volunteers asking friends to pay for individual places. It now finds itself trying to renovate buildings in Dnipro for mothers and children displaced or otherwise made vulnerable by war. That evolution is, in miniature, part of the story of Ukrainian civil society since 2022. Organisations established for one purpose have been compelled to become something larger because the society around them suddenly required it.
There is also a broader lesson for international humanitarian policy. Local organisations and international institutions possess different strengths. Large international bodies can mobilise resources, expertise and logistical networks on a scale that small charities cannot reproduce. Local organisations possess something equally difficult to manufacture: proximity. They know who needs help, understand the communities in which they operate and frequently remain after the international emergency has moved down the news agenda.
The most effective model is therefore unlikely to involve choosing between the two. It is the partnership Dmytro describes: international resources married to local knowledge and continuity. As Ukraine’s war becomes longer, that model becomes more rather than less important.
Dnipro embodies this transition particularly starkly. It remains a city behind the front, but one sufficiently close to the fighting that the consequences of events further east continually arrive at its railway stations, hospitals, shelters and charitable organisations. Some people stay for a night before travelling onwards. Others discover that Dnipro is where they must begin their lives again.
For those people, the end of an evacuation journey is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of another one. The task confronting organisations such as MIRAS is to ensure that they do not have to begin it alone.
