The Women Who Are Creating Ukraine’s Future
Natalia Vitka on Dnipro, women’s leadership and the quiet work of rebuilding a country while the war is still being fought
By Matthew Parish
Tuesday 27 October 2026
There is something magnificently Ukrainian about attempting to establish a national record with one hundred decorated pumpkins in a city periodically attacked by Russian missiles and drones. On the surface, the idea sounds almost whimsical. Dnipro is one of the principal logistical and humanitarian centres of a country at war; hospitals receive casualties from the eastern front, internally displaced families continue to arrive from devastated communities and air-raid alerts remain part of everyday life. Yet on 27 October a group of women, volunteers, artists and displaced people gathered in a café in the centre of the city to celebrate Ukrainian culture by transforming one hundred pumpkins into works of art.
The woman who invited me is Natalia Vitka, an economist and academic who spent almost twenty years in education before Russia’s full-scale invasion transformed the direction of her life. She is now one of the figures behind a remarkable network of women’s, charitable, educational and cultural initiatives in Dnipro. She heads the Dnipropetrovsk regional organisation of Territory of Women and is closely associated with the Stefania Dnipro charitable foundation, while her work has also intersected with internationally supported programmes intended to improve women’s employment and economic independence.
Her story is an illustration of something easily missed in foreign reporting about Ukraine. Much of the machinery that keeps Ukrainian society functioning away from the battlefield consists neither of government agencies nor of the large international organisations whose logos are familiar across the humanitarian world. It consists of Ukrainians who, after February 2022, simply decided that somebody had to do something.
Vitka was one of them.
“I devoted almost twenty years of my life to education and teaching,” she tells the Lviv Herald. “Education taught me how to work with people, to see their potential, to support development and to believe that even small steps can change lives.”
Then came the full-scale invasion.
“The war changed everything,” she says. “It confronted us with questions that could no longer be answered by professional knowledge alone. We had to act, to help, to be there for those who had lost their homes, their familiar lives and their sense of security.”
Her introduction to volunteering came through helping people from Mariupol. That city, largely destroyed during the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion and subsequently occupied, produced an enormous population of traumatised and displaced civilians. Dnipro became one of the places to which many travelled.
Vitka quickly discovered that the word “displaced person” conceals more than it reveals. Behind the bureaucratic category are families who have lost homes, employment, friendships and the basic assumptions around which their lives had previously been organised.
“Behind every story were people, families and children who needed not only material assistance, but human warmth and faith in the future,” she recalls.
This observation gradually changed her understanding of humanitarian work. The emergency distribution of food, clothing or other necessities is indispensable, but it does not answer the deeper question of what happens afterwards. A person who has escaped a destroyed city must eventually reconstruct a life.
“If we want to change the situation,” Vitka concluded, “we need to bring people together, create organisations, involve partners and build long-term support.”
Beyond the humanitarian parcel
That philosophy lies behind the charitable foundation Stefania Dnipro, established in response to the enormous humanitarian demands created by the war. The foundation works particularly with children, families, women and communities affected by the conflict.
Vitka is emphatic that charity should not reduce people to passive recipients of assistance.
“For us, charity is not only about handing over necessary things,” she explains. “It is about seeing behind the need a particular person, their story, their experiences and their potential. We want people who receive assistance to feel respected and to understand that their future matters.”
It is an important distinction. The international humanitarian sector necessarily operates through categories: refugees, internally displaced persons, vulnerable households, beneficiaries and recipients. Yet people do not experience their own lives in categories. The woman who has fled Mariupol is still a teacher, accountant, mother, engineer or entrepreneur. Her displacement has altered her circumstances, but it has not extinguished her identity.
Vitka remembers the families from Mariupol particularly vividly. She declines to recount identifiable individual stories without their permission, and the reason she gives is revealing.
“I would not want to disclose personal details of other people’s stories without their consent,” she says. “It is important to me to preserve their dignity and privacy.”
What those encounters taught her was that material assistance is only one dimension of recovery. People need to feel that they are seen and heard rather than regarded simply as beneficiaries of charity. This is especially important for children, who require stability and a sense of safety even while their parents may themselves be struggling with trauma and uncertainty.
Sometimes, Vitka says, a comparatively small gesture of care becomes “a point of support” upon which somebody can begin rebuilding a life.
This is humanitarianism understood not as the indefinite provision of things, but as the restoration of human agency.
The women carrying several lives at once
This philosophy becomes still clearer in Vitka’s work with Territory of Women Dnipropetrovshchyna. She describes the organisation as a space for women’s interaction, development, mutual support and achievement, connected with the nationwide Territory of Women civic organisation.
Its activities range across professional education, entrepreneurship, employment, volunteering, cultural projects and women’s leadership. The common objective is to provide women not merely with help, but with opportunities.
The distinction matters particularly in wartime Ukraine because women are frequently carrying several responsibilities simultaneously. There are displaced women starting their lives again in unfamiliar cities, wives of servicemen, women who have lost relatives, families awaiting prisoners of war and those searching for missing loved ones.
“A woman often has to care for children, support her family, look for accommodation and work and at the same time try to cope with her own experiences,” Vitka says.
Her conclusion is that assistance must therefore be integrated. Professional training may be useless if a woman has nowhere safe to leave her children. Psychological support cannot solve the problem of unemployment. A grant for a business cannot help somebody who does not yet possess the skills or confidence to operate one.
Above all, Vitka rejects the assumption that outsiders should decide what women need.
“It is important not to decide for a woman what she needs, but to ask her herself,” she says. “Women are not only those who need help. They are professionals, entrepreneurs, leaders, volunteers and active participants in Ukraine’s recovery.”
That sentence captures something important about contemporary Ukraine. The image of the Ukrainian woman as a victim of war is simultaneously true and radically incomplete. Women have suffered bereavement, displacement, violence, economic insecurity and the prolonged absence of family members serving in the armed forces. Yet they have also become some of the most energetic organisers of the civilian response to those catastrophes.
Economic freedom as personal freedom
This explains Vitka’s enthusiasm for the VONA Career and Business Hub in Dnipro, an initiative implemented by the United Nations Population Fund in Ukraine with financial support from Denmark and Sweden and in cooperation with the Ukrainian NGO Culture of Democracy.
The hub assists women seeking employment, new professional skills or opportunities to establish businesses. It combines career guidance and practical knowledge with the less tangible but equally important task of rebuilding confidence.
Vitka describes it as a place in which women can explore different careers, develop entrepreneurial ideas and form professional partnerships. It is also intended to create networks in which one woman’s experience can inspire another and acquaintances can develop into collaborations.
Her argument for women’s economic independence goes considerably beyond conventional development-policy language.
“Economic independence is not only about having your own income,” she says. “It is the ability to make decisions independently, to plan your life, support your children and feel confident about tomorrow.”
The war has made that independence more urgent. Some women have lost their employment through displacement. Others have been forced to retrain because the industries in which they previously worked have disappeared from their new communities. Still others have assumed financial responsibility for families while partners serve in the military.
Training, employment and entrepreneurship therefore become forms of resilience. A person with a livelihood possesses choices unavailable to somebody entirely dependent upon external support.
“For me it is important that women have not only support during a difficult period, but real tools for building their own future,” Vitka says. “An economically capable woman means not only a stronger family, but a more resilient community and country.”
There is a broader economic truth here. Ukraine’s eventual reconstruction will require an enormous mobilisation of human capital. Millions have left the country, hundreds of thousands serve in the armed forces and the demographic consequences of the war will endure for decades. Ukraine cannot afford to leave the abilities of half its population underdeveloped.
Women’s economic empowerment in Ukraine is therefore not simply a matter of equality. It is a national economic necessity.
The people who know the street
One of the more interesting features of Dnipro is the strength of its indigenous civic society. Foreign organisations are present and international financial assistance remains enormously important, but much of the everyday work of maintaining communities is undertaken by local Ukrainians.
Vitka thinks this is partly because local organisations possess something that cannot easily be imported: intimate knowledge of the community.
“Local organisations understand the needs of people in their communities well,” she explains. “They know the context, can react quickly to changes and see things that can sometimes be difficult to notice from a distance.”
This is not an argument against international assistance. Vitka is strongly supportive of it, and her own activities demonstrate the benefits that can arise when international institutions and Ukrainian civil society cooperate successfully.
“International solidarity is enormously important for Ukraine,” she says. External partners can attract resources, exchange expertise and create opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable.
But she adds an important qualification.
“Effective cooperation begins with dialogue. It is important to listen to local organisations, understand people’s specific needs and take into account the context in which they live.”
It is a diplomatic formulation of an issue encountered repeatedly across the international humanitarian sector. Large organisations possess money, expertise and administrative capacity. Local organisations possess relationships, cultural understanding and the ability to recognise needs that may never appear in a formal assessment prepared in a distant office.
The most successful partnerships combine the two.
“International experience can be extremely valuable,” Vitka says, “while local teams help to understand how to adapt solutions to the real life of the community.”
This may be one of the most important lessons international organisations can learn from Ukraine. Local volunteers should not merely be treated as inexpensive implementing partners for programmes designed elsewhere. They possess knowledge in their own right.
A city transformed by displacement
Dnipro itself has become an experiment in precisely this form of community adaptation. Since 2022 the city has absorbed large numbers of people displaced from the east and south, including many from communities that remain occupied or have been devastated by fighting.
For some, Dnipro is temporary shelter. For others, it has become home.
“To receive a person is much more than to provide temporary assistance,” Vitka observes. “It is important to help them feel part of the community, find work, restore social connections and give children the opportunity to study and develop.”
This is where cultural organisations and apparently modest community activities assume an importance that can easily be overlooked. Women’s groups, creative events and civic gatherings provide opportunities for newcomers to form relationships with people already living in the city.
Vitka rejects the distinction between “locals” and “newcomers” as a permanent organising principle.
“When we do not divide people into ‘local’ and ‘newly arrived’, but see personalities first and foremost, a space for genuine unity emerges.”
Dnipro is consequently becoming a different city. It contains people and institutions transplanted from elsewhere in Ukraine, amongst them universities and businesses whose original homes have been occupied or destroyed. The social geography of the country is being rewritten while the war continues.
Resilience is not fearlessness
All this work takes place beneath the continuing threat of Russian attack.
Air-raid alerts interrupt meetings and events. Plans must be changed, shelters identified and activities reorganised. Volunteers themselves worry about relatives, experience exhaustion and sometimes suffer bereavement.
Vitka offers a useful corrective to the increasingly overused language of Ukrainian “resilience”.
“Resilience is not the absence of fear,” she says. “It is the ability to continue important work while taking care of yourself and those around you.”
This is perhaps a more realistic definition than the heroic version commonly presented abroad. Ukrainians do not possess some mysterious national immunity to terror, grief or exhaustion. They experience precisely those emotions, but nevertheless continue organising schools, businesses, charities, exhibitions and ordinary family lives.
Vitka is conscious that the volunteers upon whom Ukrainian civil society depends can themselves become exhausted. One of the principal challenges facing charitable organisations, she says, is therefore preserving their teams.
“Volunteers are also living through the war. They have families, their own difficulties and emotional exhaustion.”
Civil society cannot survive indefinitely upon sacrifice alone. Organisations require resources, planning, coordination and institutional stability. Vitka also stresses transparency and responsibility in the use of funds, because trust is the currency upon which voluntary organisations ultimately depend.
Why one hundred pumpkins matter
This brings us to GARBUZ HUB.
The initiative originated with Olena Bulakh, who conceived the idea of turning the familiar autumn pumpkin into the centrepiece of a collective cultural project. The intention is to combine Ukrainian traditions, art, gastronomy and communal creativity in a contemporary setting.
The one hundred decorated pumpkin lanterns are the most visually striking element. They use different artistic techniques and are intended collectively to form a national record.
Yet Vitka insists that the number itself is secondary.
“One hundred pumpkin lanterns are an image of shared creative work, in which every element becomes part of a larger story,” she explains. “When many separate works are combined into one composition, they symbolise diversity, cooperation and the strength of a common idea.”
The pumpkin itself has deep roots in Ukrainian domestic and agricultural culture. It evokes harvest, abundance, the family table and the relationship between people and the land. But GARBUZ HUB is not an exercise in ethnographic preservation.
Vitka is interested in something more dynamic: taking inherited symbols and creating new traditions from them.
“Culture should not remain only in museum exhibitions or textbooks,” she says. “It lives when people interact with it, create, share knowledge and find new ways of expressing it.”
This is a subtle but important idea. A culture preserved exclusively behind glass is already half dead. Living cultures borrow, adapt and reinvent themselves. They remain connected to their history precisely because each generation makes that history its own.
“Preserving heritage does not mean rejecting the new,” Vitka observes. “On the contrary, we can respect the past while creating traditions that will be close to our children and future generations.”
Culture in wartime
There is an obvious question. Why spend energy upon cultural events while soldiers are fighting and civilians are dying?
Vitka’s answer is that this is precisely when culture becomes important.
“During war, culture helps us preserve a sense of belonging, remember who we are and find points of support in shared values.”
Creative activities allow people to meet and remind themselves that life has not been reduced entirely to survival. For displaced families, cultural events can restore social connections destroyed by forced migration. For children, they can provide experiences that are not defined by air-raid sirens or adult anxiety.
Vitka is careful not to make exaggerated therapeutic claims. Cultural activities, she emphasises, cannot replace professional psychological treatment where it is required.
But they can create “a supportive environment in which a person feels accepted, important and not alone.”
This is the deeper significance of one hundred pumpkins in wartime Dnipro. They are not an alternative to serious humanitarian work. They are part of the same struggle to prevent human beings from being reduced to their injuries.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has destroyed houses, factories, schools and hospitals. It has also attempted to destroy the ordinary continuity through which people imagine a future. Continuing to make art, educate children, start businesses and establish new traditions is therefore an assertion that the future still exists.
Women and the reconstruction of Ukraine
Vitka believes Ukrainian women will occupy a central position in that future.
“Ukrainian women today play an enormous role in the life of the country,” she says. “They serve, volunteer, work in communities, develop businesses, raise children, support loved ones and create new civic initiatives.”
But she adds a qualification that deserves attention. Celebrating the extraordinary strength of Ukrainian women can become another way of imposing impossible expectations upon them.
“We cannot expect women alone to carry all the responsibility for the family, the community and the reconstruction of the country.”
Women require resources, professional opportunities and an equal role in decisions about reconstruction. They should not merely provide the labour necessary to implement plans conceived by somebody else.
“Women must be not only participants in reconstruction processes, but among those who determine their direction.”
Her definition of strength is similarly refreshing.
“The strength of Ukrainian women is not that they never become tired or never need help,” she says. “It is also in their ability to unite, ask for support, support one another and find solutions together.”
This is a more humane conception of resilience. Strength does not require pretending that one is invulnerable.
Creating the future while it is still dark
Towards the end of our exchange, I ask Vitka what she would like readers outside Ukraine to understand about her country.
Her answer returns to the distinction between Ukraine as a war reported on television and Ukraine as a society inhabited by millions of people.
“I want the world to see in Ukraine not only war, destruction and pain,” she says. “Behind every news story are people who continue to work, raise children, help others, develop their communities and preserve their culture.”
Dnipro exemplifies this contradiction. It is a city exposed to continuing attack that nevertheless remains an extraordinarily energetic centre of Ukrainian civilian life. Volunteers organise aid, entrepreneurs start businesses, displaced people construct new lives and cultural initiatives continue even under the possibility that an air-raid siren may interrupt them.
Vitka’s appeal to the international community is therefore not principally for sympathy.
“We need not only compassionate attention to our pain, but partnership that will help create opportunities for life, development and reconstruction.”
That is perhaps the most important observation of all. There is an enormous difference between pitying Ukraine and investing in its future.
Natalia Vitka’s work inhabits precisely that space between the two. Emergency humanitarian assistance remains necessary, but the ultimate objective must be to make emergency assistance unnecessary. A displaced woman needs food and shelter today, but she also needs the possibility of employment tomorrow. A traumatised child needs protection, but also education and friendship. A volunteer needs determination, but also rest and institutional support. A country at war needs weapons, but it also needs universities, businesses, culture and the confidence to imagine itself after victory.
This is why the decorated pumpkins in a Dnipro café are not quite as incongruous as they first appear. They are small manifestations of the same instinct that has sustained Ukrainian civil society throughout the war: the refusal to postpone living until circumstances become easier.
“We are a strong people. A mighty people,” Vitka tells the Lviv Herald. “Our strength is in freedom, dignity, unity and love for Ukraine.”
Then comes the sentence that best explains her work.
“And we continue to create the future, even when it is dark.”
